The Latest Development on Cognitive Informatics

Abstract

Cognitive informatics (CI) is a cutting-edge and profound interdisciplinary research area that tackles the common root problems and foundations of modern informatics, computation, software engineering, AI, and life sciences. CI is a new frontier that studies internal information processing mechanisms and processes of the brain, and their applications in computing, software, and ICT industries. Conventional information theory (Shannon, 1948) treated information as a measure of the probability of messages received from a channel. It was focused on information transmission rather than information itself. Modern information theory perceives information as any aspect of the natural world that can be abstracted and digitally represented. With this orientation, information is regarded as entities of messages, rather than a probabilistic measurement of them as in the classical information theory. However, it is recognized that current information theories are still in a category of external informatics. Complementing to these, there is a whole range of extremely interesting new research areas known as CI, a term which was coined by the author in 2001. I think, therefore I am (Rene Descartes, 1596–1650).’ CI draws the attention of research on the internal information processing mechanisms of the brain, which are perceived as the foundation of next generation IT and software technologies, such as neural computers, bio-computers, novel methodologies of software engineering, quantum information processing, and powerful ICT systems. This talk focuses on the natural information processing mechanisms and cognitive processes. The latest development on CI at the First IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Informatics (ICCI’02) will be reported. At heoretical framework of CI as an emerging and interdisciplinary research area will be presented. The objectives of this talk are to draw attention of researchers, practitioners and graduate students on the investigation of cognitive mechanisms and processes of human information processing, and to stimulate the collaborative international effort on CI research and engineering applications.