#information

I believe I’m very normal. I’m hyper-normal. I’m more normal than anyone else I know. I think my thoughts, my indulgences, my desires, my pleasures may at first appear different, but that is only because they are more normal, not because they are more esoteric. I believe I am bored when other people are bored, only faster. I am interested when others are interested, only more interested. But I also think I’m less, rather than more, intelligent than other people. By indulging my interests through my life, and perhaps because of rather than despite many failures, I have been able to design my life. ↗

— Richard Saul Wurman

#information-architecture #self-knowledge #architecture

Information, defined intuitively and informally, might be something like 'uncertainty's antidote.' This turns out also to be the formal definition- the amount of information comes from the amount by which something reduces uncertainty...The higher the [information] entropy, the more information there is. It turns out to be a value capable of measuring a startling array of things- from the flip of a coin to a telephone call, to a Joyce novel, to a first date, to last words, to a Turing test...Entropy suggests that we gain the most insight on a question when we take it to the friend, colleague, or mentor of whose reaction and response we're least certain. And it suggests, perhaps, reversing the equation, that if we want to gain the most insight into a person, we should ask the question of qhose answer we're least certain... Pleasantries are low entropy, biased so far that they stop being an earnest inquiry and become ritual. Ritual has its virtues, of course, and I don't quibble with them in the slightest. But if we really want to start fathoming someone, we need to get them speaking in sentences we can't finish. ↗

— Brian Christian

#information #dating

The information contained in an English sentence or computer software does not derive from the chemistry of the ink or the physics of magnetism, but from a source extrinsic to physics and chemistry altogether. Indeed, in both cases, the message transcends the properties of the medium. The information in DNA also transcends the properties of its material medium. ↗

— Stephen C. Meyer

#dna #id #information #intelligent-design #science

The institution of a public library, containing books on education, would be well adapted for the information of teachers, many of whom are not able to purchase expensive publications on those subjects. ↗

— Joseph Lancaster

#adapted #books #containing #education #expensive

It is impossible to work in information technology without also engaging in social engineering. ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#engaging #engineering #impossible #information #information technology

The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. ↗

— Tim Berners-Lee

#computers #cooperation #current #enabling #extension

People's minds are overloaded with information. ↗

— Allen Leech

#minds #overloaded #people

Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about. ↗

— Seth Lloyd

#being #certainly #civilization #course #history

I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits. ↗

— John Locke

#ask #attribute #been #conversing #descriptions

Believing that our greatest need is for the general public to be able to get better information, to have an opportunity to learn better the real issues of the less fortunate, we centered the activities of the Fairness Project on that. ↗

— Mike Lowry

#activities #believing #better #centered #fairness