The comments I received from my previous blog have helped me to realize that I was unclear as to my intent; moreover, it is important to state that the last blog ended with a question that was meant to be taken literally so as to explore the usefulness of information to us as humans.
The first comment was this: “A computer scientist somewhere just died: ‘Information . . . I will take to mean data’." My definition of information was an compilation of several definitions in which the word data is used profusely. Thus, it was included in the definition. Upon researching the definition of data, I have learned that it is the plural of datum whose Latin root means a gift or present. A complete definition (before computer scientists used the word) of datum/data is as follows:
1. Something given, granted, or admitted: a premise upon which something can be argued or inferred: usually in the plural: as, the problem could not be solved, owing to insufficient data.
2. In mathematics, certain relationships or quantities, given or known, from which unknown quantities are determined.
I would say that data is a type of information even to the computer scientist. Who, without knowing data or the information pertaining to how it works, would be unable to program.
The second comment is as follows:
“Isn't information (the processed "data") somehow necessary to provide the bare necessities? For me to be anything more than a slug, I have to have information. From the time that I wake up in the morning until I lay my head down, I encounter thousands of bytes of data from my senses that are interpreted into information.
At a basic level I must have information. For example, how is one to know where to catch the fish for dinner without the information about which bait fish are biting and where? At a micro level we have basic informational needs that that provide for the basic needs that you have listed. In the modern world, how is one to catch that preverbal fish without the information of our careers?”
This is precisely the kind of questioning I wished the reader to engage in. Maybe we can think of information, as it pertains to pure physiological survival, into two categories, those being 1) instinctual information and 2) rational information.
1) Instinctual information is that in which we do not always consciously engage such as temperature regulation. Our bodies receive the information that we are overheating and then responds by sweating and vasodilation at our skin. The fact that we seek out a beverage is also instinctual as others animals seek water instinctually, without rational thought. However, there is a fine line between rational and instinctual information.
2) Rational information is that kind of information in which humans can engage that animals and other beasts cannot—if it is that rationality is what truly separates us from them. Here we can say that in our culture that to survive we must have a means or vocation by which we procure money with which to buy essentials.
