Control Information Theory
Contextual Quote
We need a post-Shannon relational information theory:
"the difference between
- “Shannon information” (which focusses on quantity)
- and “IC” (which focusses on purposeful organization)
.. is an important reconceptualization in information theory for understanding metasystems. Too often we frame the solutions to our problems in term of quantity, i.e., we need better information technologies or more energy. But actually transforming higher IP into useful collective beneficial modes of information control requires a purposeful re-organization of that new potentiality. Thus, we need to re-focus on creating new organizations, new ways for purposeful interconnection."
- Cadell Last [1]
Description
Cadell Last:
"CIT posits that all living systems (biological or biocultural) possess “control information” (IC): IC is the relational capacity to use information in the acquisition, disposition, and utilization of energy for cybernetic processes (i.e. control and feedback). CIT emphasizes that information cannot simply be quantified as an “amount” measured in bits, as traditional information theory (i.e. “Shannon information”) suggests (see: Shannon, 1948). This is because measuring the amount of information explicitly ignores the function-laden(content and meaning) nature of information used by living systems (Kauffman et al.,2008). Consequently, there is no correlation between Shannon information and the physical structural order observed in living system organizations (Kauffman, 2000).
To bridge this gap IC is a concept that represents a living systems capacity to control the capacity to do work (i.e. the functional relationship between goals inherent to cybernetic informational processes and physical structural order). In this theory, the “amount” of IC is a manifestation of a living systems “power” to use information to control available energy for purposeful cybernetic activities, and not simply in the amount of information, nor the amount of energy (Corning, 2007). The difference is of fundamental importance to the construction of this model, because the sheer amount of information or energy in a system is not our concern. Instead we are concerned with how information and energy is purposively organized (i.e. do we create an increasingly unequal and unstable world? Or do we create an increasingly equal and stable world?)."
Discussion
Cadell Last on the societal implications of IC:
"There have been three human metasystems built around the control of three mostly distinct primary energy sources. These metasystems include hunting, agricultural, and industrial organizations. The control of these energy sources was always organized through the utilization of a new information medium to connect previously disparate subsystems: language, writing, printing press. All of these human metasystem transitions can be characterized by subsystems of lower control becoming integrated under new control regimes: bands/tribes, chiefdoms/kingdoms, nation-states/international. The modern nation-state sits atop an ancient human metasystem control hierarchy of ever-more diversely integrated subsystems. However, its status as the highest control is by no means destined to continue indefinitely; but rather it is contingent on the breakdown, stability, or new synergy of IC feedback. These IC feedbacks in a sense “dictate” whether our current system hierarchy will collapse under the weight of poor socioeconomic decision making, or whether our current system’s hierarchies will become integrated and re-organized within yet another higher-level control system."