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1. infotechnology: a postmodern revolution?
until a decade ago, the idea that information technology represents a major cultural and philosophical change was held only by small and esoteric groups (although technologically significant), like the BBS and hacking communities. these "cyber-utopists" claimed that the new technology will very soon change almost everything in our life and our worldview. the forthcoming changes were supposed to touch the perception of our body and our sense of identity, the conditions and definitions of work, the laws of economy, the relevance of national governments, the distinctions between center and periphery, adults and children, seriousness and play, or reality and imagination.. in short, almost everything.
then, around 1995, started the big infotechnology hype. cyber-talk became quasi mainstream, and serious investors were ready to pour millions on anything.com just to get a foothold in the new territory. for a moment it seemed as if the hard laws of economy are becoming obsolete, as infotechnology was really going to change everything. but the hype didn't last for long. conservative measures by governments (anti-hacker laws, attempts of free speech limitation, the digital millenium act..), the psychological effect of Y2K bug's failure to produce any significant consequences, and the NASDAQ fall of early 2000, have left many people disenchanted with the idea of a radical infotechnology revolution. the talk about a return to "old economy" expresses this disenchantment. the message behind it is that perhaps infotechnology is not such a major revolution after all, but only more of the same - another technological development which will soon be assimilated into the existing frameworks of the modern industrialized west.
the claim i wish to make here is that hype or not, the rise of infotechnology does represent a significant turning point in our thinking. we can see it as the technological correlate of a "postmodern" situation, in the sense that some fundamental features of what we used to identify as a modern worldview are now becoming obsolete, or at least significantly modified. the crucial point here is that throughout the modern period, western thought was shaped around the concept of matter, and many of its features took their inspiration from properties assigned to material objects. what is happening today is that the concept of information is gradually assuming a similar role - an inspiration and a source of metaphors for thinking in almost every domain. the significance of this change lies in the fact that matter and information obey very different rules. thus, what we are witnessing today may be part of a major transition, in which the modern guiding rules of thought inspired by the properties of matter are being replaced by the new postmodern rules of information.
2. matter and information: technology, economy, society
the centrality of the concept of matter in modern western worldview extended over many domains, in which parallel developments mutually reinforced and gave sense to each other. we can mention here the "mainstream" modern currents that took their inspiration from it, in the following fields:
philosophy - materialist atheism.
science - the science of matter, mainly mechanics.
technology - material machines, e.g. the mechanical clock and the steam engine.
socioeconomics - rise of the capitalist bourgeoisie with materialistic values.
the most obvious change occurring today is happening in the interrelated domains of technology and economy. until a few decades ago, modern technology was mainly concerned with two activities:
(i) shaping of matter into new compositions and forms (material production technology)
(ii) moving pieces of matter from one place to another (transportation technology)
there were few (but significant) exceptions. for example, the printing press operated in two parallel planes - the substance of books was printed on paper (matter), while their content was text (information). this, however, represented an economical anomaly, where the value of a book as a material product was unrelated to its value as an information product. the material aspect (the need to print, bind and distribute sheets of paper) determined the economic relations between author, publisher and buyer, and was not much affected by the potential of the book to transform people's mind even in economically significant ways. another exception is electronic communication technology, starting with the development of the electric telegraph around 1850. this, however, can be seen as the beginning of the new postmodern era of information technology, rather than as a characteristic part of modern material technology.
the significant change here is that the information aspect of products is becoming more central, at the expense of the material aspect. for example, the value of a software depends on the information structure of its files, while the question whether it is distributed on a cd-rom or through the internet is insignificant. even typically material products are affected by this shift. for example, it is true that we still need to eat a material pizza. but the proper organization of the pizza production with the aid of information products (the software used to monitor the supply of wheat and tomatoes, the regulation of production and home deliveries, the possibility of ordering through the telephone or the internet) is quickly becoming the most relevant factor in the successful operation of the pizza parlor.
still, the change is not limited to the domains of technology and economy. if we examine the complex links that formed the modern industrialized world, we realize that technology and economy were parts of a network that spanned many other fields, from philosophy and pure science to social organization and perceptions of the human self. we can mention, for example, the central role played by the mechanical clock metaphor - from Descartes' mechanical philosophy and the rise of the Laplacian view of mechanics, to centrally planned cities or reductionist modern medicine. because of this interdependence, a major change in one part of the network is inevitably reflected in other parts. thus, the shift from matter to information in the fields of technology and economy can correspond to similar and concomitant shifts in other domains.
to illustrate this, let us consider three examples of concrete points in which the rules of matter and information differ. but first, let me precise that i am not talking about matter "as it is" (whatever this may mean), but rather about the concept of matter as it was imagined throughout most of the modern period. as far as inspiration goes, this is of course the decisive factor. actually, in all three points, physical discoveries made during the 20th century have changed the idea of matter in ways that undermine the applicability of the old rules. we can see this as another aspect of the interdependence of concepts in different fields: because of cultural and societal changes we are ready today to consider new visions of matter, and the scientific developments stemming from this readiness reinforce in their turn the corresponding cultural tendencies. thus, for each of the examples, we shall point out the difference in basic rules, mention some implications for the processes taking place in our society, and refer to the respective correlates in 20th century physics.
3. conservation vs. self-replication
matter obeys a law of conservation: a given quantity of matter will always remains the same quantity. thus, one bushel of wheat, one ounce of gold, or one pen will never become two. in contrast, a piece of information can self-replicate and multiply itself. given an appropriate environment, one instance of a joke, a piece of gossip, a biological or a computer virus, an electronic chain letter or a software file will reproduce, and copies of it will quickly appear in a multitude of interconnected minds, bodies or computers.
the idea of conservation of matter is central to our definitions of ownership and property. if one pen remains one pen, then either it belongs to me or to you: we cannot both be full owners of the same object. in this respect quantities of matter and material products behave much like areas of land, which also obeys a law of conservation. an acre of land cannot be made into two acres. therefore, the same land cannot simultaneously belong to different owners. as many animals have a clear sense of exclusive territorial domination, it is possible that the common property of conservation played a part in the human transition from an initial concept of land domination into the idea of material possession.
the shift from conserved matter to self-replicating information thus implies a change in the basic concepts of ownership and property, and we can see this operating today in the domain of digital products. for example, one of the claims put forward by traditional music companies and big software corporations is that free copying of digital products (or as they call it, "piracy") is fully equivalent to theft of material products: taking something which belongs to someone else and making it yours. therefore, unwarranted copying of digital products is morally wrong, and this basic moral judgement is not dependent upon the actual economic consequences of the copying.
however, this moral claim is much weakened when we consider the fundamental difference between conserved matter and self-replicating information: the nature of the "something taken" is not the same. if i take your pen, than you necessarily lose it. but if i copy a software that you have in your posession, the functionality of the original and your ability to use it are in no way diminished. to cite Thomas Jefferson, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me."
in fact, in many cases the copying of digital products actually increases their value for the original owner. a typical example is a communication program: if more copies exist, then each copy can be used to communicate with more agents. in other cases, free distribution can be a powerful tool for marketing a brand identity. this is exactly the idea behind the so-called "viral marketing" (as in the case of icq software), or the free distribution of software demos. there is no equivalent to this phenomenon when we consider the ownership of land or material products.
thus, while the conservation of land and matter gave rise to thinking in terms of "zero-sum" games, the self-replicability of information encourages us to look for "everybody wins" situations. the reason why stealing is morally wrong is that stealing a material product from somebody is inevitably a profit for the thief and a loss for the original owner. but the same is not necessarily true in the case of information products. i am not saying here that we should give up any notion of ownership of digital properties, or that any restrictions on free software and music distribution should be abolished. but we should not automatically apply concepts of ownership and theft in this new context, without considering the fundamental differences between conserved matter and self-replicating information.
we can add here that in 20th century physics, the idea of conservation took a more subtle form. in relativity theory, energy can be transformed into matter, which means that one accelerated particle can decompose into many particles with a much greater rest mass. also, in quantum field theory, virtual particles are created for a short while from the physical vacuum. thus, although laws of conservation still play an very important part in the new physics, their application is much less rigid than in "classical" 19th century physics.
4. objectification vs. user-dependence
modern physical thinking was based on the idea that it is possible to identify a set of objective properties: for example, the geometrical shape of an object, its mass or its electric charge. these properties were believed to belong to the object "as it is", independently of its perception by any human observer. the description of matter in terms of such properties was thus believed to be objective, that is, observer-independent. the full list of these properties was thought to constitute the true and objective nature of material reality.
in contrast, a given piece of information cannot be defined in purely objective terms. reading the text of the same book can be a life-changing experience for one reader, a few hours of boredom for another, or nothing at all for a third one who cannot read the language. for the first reader the book contains valuable information, while for the third it represents no information at all. to be sure, Shannon's "information theory" of the 1950's tried to give an objective definition for the amount of information. But this definition can only relate to the size and formal structure of a message, not to its meaning. it cannot distinguish, for example, between a seminal scientific paper, a silly joke, or a stream of sentences poured out by a random word generator. by Shannon's definition, the three cases can involve the same amount of information in terms of computer file size. but clearly, we cannot say that their information content for any particular reader is the same.
this is the point behind Gregory Bateson's definition "information is a difference which makes a difference" made in early 1970's. the first "difference" refers to Shannon's definition of information as negative entropy, i.e. the degree of inhomogeneity in a system. thus, the inhomogeneous dispersion of ink spots on a sheet of paper (or the magnetization directions of molecules on a diskette surface) are a "difference" that can encode a given amount of information. but in order for the ink spots to be truly information, they have to "make a difference" to someone. that is, they have to have some meaning for the reader, or as we would call it today, "the user".
we can see here an analogy between the shift from matter to information and the postmodern move away from the idea of an objective description of reality. modern philosophy, inspired by science, looked for a single description of reality "as it is". in contrast, postmodern thinking puts forward the idea of a multitude of descriptions of reality, each one valid from the point of view of a different observer. in that, postmodern reality can be seen as something similar to Bateson's information, in the sense that both are user-dependent.
an similar shift from things "as they are" to things that are "user-dependent" is taking place in the perspective of today's technological industry. for example, the "machine operator" of the modern era had to adapt himself to the machine. in contrast, the present-day user expects a custom-made product specifically tailored to his or her specific preferences. this shift is reflected in the general prevalence of terms like "user interface" or "mass customization", concepts which were almost unheard of 2 or 3 decades ago.
the loss of objectivity has also its 20th century physics correlate in the field of quantum mechanics. according to the complementarity view advocated by Niels Bohr, an objective description of a quantum entity like the electron is impossible. we cannot say whether an electron is "really" a wave or a particle. instead, we can only specify the proper description of the electron from the point of view of a given observer in a specific experimental context. thus, at the most basic level of physics, present day science has lost the pretension of arriving at an objective description of material reality. instead, we should content ourselves with an observer-dependent description of reality which happens to answer our specific needs at a given moment.
5. separability vs. interconnectedness
in the context of 19th century physics, pieces of matter could be separated from each other. a material object was supposed to exist by itself, regardless of the presence of other objects. in terms of the objective properties mentioned above, they were properties of each object alone, regardless of its relation with other objects. in contrast, a piece of information is meaningless by itself. for example, the significance of a book for a particular reader is dependent on his or her previous readings, and on its references to other literary creations. one copy of a communication software is worthless unless there are other copies around to communicate with. and a web page may lose most or all of its value if all its links to other pages are cut off.
the separability of material objects was at the basis of some central features of the mechanistic world view. among else, it inspired the idea of material reduction, in which composite systems can be fully decomposed into their constituent parts. for example, a mechanical clock can be taken apart into its individual parts and then reconstructed again, because each part keeps its properties when isolated from the rest of the system. we can contrast this with living organisms (which, before the modern period, were not thought of as purely material). each part of an organism is dependent on the presence and proper functioning of the other parts. this property of living systems was expressed by holistic concepts characterizing the collective organism, like Aristotle's "entelechy" or the "vital force" of later, anti-mechanistic biology.
due to the non-separability of information items, the shift from matter to information favors the return from mechanistic to organic and holistic ways of thought. we can see such a tendency today in various fields, for example holistic approaches in ecology or in alternative medicine. also, the separability of matter was a major inspiration for the modern idea of human individuality. it is therefore possible to see the new attempts to reestablish tribal and group identities as the societal correlate of the interconnectedness of information. finally, in the domain of 20th century physics, the analogues would be the quantum nonseparability of distant objects (expressed by EPR states and the Bell inequality), and the new theories of complex adaptive systems, that put a new emphasis on emergent collective features of composite systems.
6. conclusion
we briefly reviewed three examples in which matter and information obey different rules, and inspire different ways of thinking. surely more examples can be found. in addition, while here we discussed each point of difference separately, many important features of information that are relevant to what is going on today involve a combination of several points. for example, the assignment of clearly defined property rights to information products is problematic not only because of its non-consevation. self-replicating items of information can also undergo mutations and development, and combine with other items to give something new. thus, an idea that i put forward as mine carries the influence of ideas from other people, that i previously heard and assimilated. the nonseparability of information means that i cannot clearly separate "what i took from others and modified" from "what i added as an original contribution". therefore, unambiguous ownership of information items is much more problematic than ownership of material objects.
as we see, the new ways of thinking which correspond to the rules of information go against what was taken as granted throughout most of the modern period. as the shift from matter to information is further assimilated in our society, we can therefore expect a corresponding long-term change of perspective in many different fields. thus, the intuition of the previous millennium's cyber-utopists, that information technology will bring about an all-encompassing revolution in thinking, may after all prove to be not so misplaced.
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