Abstract
The Culture of Information refers to a cultural structure that strips away information from its meaning and conduces information to be seen as a commodity. In this chapter one of the main propositions is that today’s global society should be examined through the reality of information overload that makes it possible to filter and promote standardized set of values and beliefs activities, thus leading to a mass culture produced from commercialization of information and its increased ability to wire people through information.
He who understands the situation is not well informed
Ablert Szent-Gyorgyi
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Notes
- 1.
Searle (1995).
- 2.
It is noteworthy to mentioned that a biological adaptation is an inborn form of behavior; but a culture is a learned form of behavior – a communally preferred form, which (like other inventions) has been adopted by a whole society.
- 3.
Butler (1952).
- 4.
Bourdieu (1993).
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Babe (2009).
- 7.
Ibid, pp. 4.
- 8.
Dewey et al. (1999).
- 9.
Ibid, pp. 8.
- 10.
Benedict (2006).
- 11.
Ibid, pp. 49. Emphasis added.
- 12.
See Hofstede (1984).
- 13.
See Carayannis and Pirzadeh (2014).
- 14.
Lavalle et al. (2011).
- 15.
For example, a red traffic light is data. The meaning that we attach to this data is “Stop”. When you drive up to a red light and stop, you do so because your brain sees the data and process it. For more details see http://www.ictweb.org/as_ict/as_knowledge_information_data.html
- 16.
See Wikipedia under ‘Macy Conferences’.
- 17.
Fairthorne (1954).
- 18.
Melanie Mitchell, An introduction to Genetic Algorithms, MIT Press, 1998, p. 67. However, Mitchell explained further that while the Lamarckian hypothesis is rejected by almost all biologists, she still believed ‘learning (or more generally, phenotypic plasticity) can indeed have a significant effects on evolution, though in less ways than Lamarck suggested’ (ibid.). She then provided an example to explained her position, ‘an organism that has the capacity to learn that a particular plant is poisonous will be more likely to survive (by learning not to eat the plant) than organisms that are unable to learn this information, and thus will be more likely to produce offspring that also have this leaning capacity. Evolutionary variation will have a change to work on this line of offspring, allowing for the possibility that the trait – avoiding the poisonous plant – will be discovered genetically rather than learned anew each generation. Having the desired behavior encoded genetically would give an organism a selective advantage over organisms that were merely able to learn the desired behavior during their lifetimes, because learning behavior is generally less reliable process than developing a genetically coded behavior; too many unexpected things could get in the way of learning during an organism’s lifetime. Moreover, genetically encoded information can be available immediately after birth, whereas leaning takes time and sometimes requires potentially fatal trial and error. In short, the capacity to acquire a certain desired trait allows the learning organism to survive preferentially, thus giving genetic variation the possibility of independently discovering the desired trait. Without such learning, the likelihood of survival – and thus the opportunity for genetic discovery – decreases.’ (Ibid., p. 67).
- 19.
Mason (2003).
- 20.
C. Shannon, and W. Weaver, The mathematical theory of communication. Original work published in 1948. It should be noted that Shannon and Weaver’s The Mathematical Theory of Communication is not actually a co-authored book. The book consists of two essays: Weaver’s “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication” and Shannon’s, earlier paper, with the new title “The Mathematical Theory of Communication.” In fact as Lai Ma observed, “Most readings of information theory are based on Warren Weaver’s exposition of Shannon’s theory.” (see Lai Ma, “Meanings of Information: The Assumptions and Research Consequences of Three Foundational LIS Theories”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2012, vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 717).
- 21.
The reader should note that the Shannon–Weaver Model will be analyzed in more detail in a later section.
- 22.
In 1983, Shaw and Davis already stated that “[M]uch theoretical work in information science is based on the Shannon-Weaver model of communication” (D. Shaw and C. H. Davis, “Entropy and information: A multidisciplinary overview”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 1983, vol.34, no. 1, p. 71). More recently, Kalbach (2009) claims that Shannon and Weaver are the “fathers of modern information and communication theory” and that the concept of uncertainty in their work “underlies most aspects of our lives” (J. Kalbach, “On uncertainty in information architecture”, Journal of Information Architecture, 2009, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 48).
- 23.
Gleick (2011).
- 24.
McLuhan (1998a).
- 25.
Dawkins (1996).
- 26.
There are those who considered comparing humans with a machine takes away our enchanted and magical attributes, I do not subscribed to such characterization. On the personal note, such comparison does not make me feel less special. What a wonderful thing that collection of matters, formed by billion years of evolutionary process, have been able to create van Gogh’s Starry Night or Bach prelude.
- 27.
This observation also applies in a biological system, where information that is unfilled and does not provide a selective advantage is often lost.
- 28.
McLuhan (1998b).
- 29.
An argument has been put forward that the present set-up should be changed because it dictates a single-language dimension. I beg to differ with the approach rather than the logic of the argument. The fact is that English is the dominant language because, as mentioned above, more documents are either written in or translated into English. This is not going to change even if the dominant language on the Internet changes, say, from English to Chinese, because information that is available on the Internet is inscribed in English.
- 30.
Here the definition of language is similar to that defined by Saussure, as an organism, which is governed by a code and that this code is written according to rules (grammar). See F. de Saussure, SAUSSURE’S FIRST COURSE OF LECTURES ON GENERAL LINGUISTICS (1907), translated by George Wolf, Pergamon, 1996.
- 31.
Arrow (1996).
- 32.
Ibid, pp. 120.
- 33.
Grossman (2012).
- 34.
Ibid. pp.171.
- 35.
See Lori Thurgood, Mary J. Golladay, and Susan T. Hill, U.S. Doctorates in the twentieth Century, National Science Foundation, June 2006. The report is available on Internet.
- 36.
Bizony (2007).
- 37.
Mirowski and Sent (2002).
- 38.
- 39.
Bloch (1971).
- 40.
The reader should note that this study argues that these terms could not have prevailed without today’s culture of information where billboard lights constantly endorse visual messages, pervasiveness of “talking heads” exponentially rising and our young are thought how to drained deeper and deeper into virtual obsoleteness.
- 41.
Slaughter and Rhoads (2002).
- 42.
Ibid. pp. 85.
- 43.
Unfortunately, at the present, these sort of erroneous arguments continue to play a major role in policy-making, both at the level of universities and at the level of governments. The urge to links commercial interest and public welfare seems to join for years to come.
- 44.
Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Project Gutenberg HTML File, Volume I, Chapter 35, pp. 533.
- 45.
Noble (2001).
- 46.
Mirowski and Sent (2008).
- 47.
Forman (2002).
- 48.
In Hungry, Lawmakers from Hungart’s populist ruling party have proposed to grant foreign nationals residency in exchange for purchasing of government bonds (see Margit Feher, “Hungary Offer Wealthy Foreigners Residency for Help on Debt”, Wall Street Journal, Oct 31, 2012, p. A11).
- 49.
A 20-year-old Brazilian woman auctioning off her virginity online (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/catarina-migliorini-sells-virginity-780k_n_2010260.html#slide=1682650); and
- 50.
Having said that, the definition is wide open to various interpretation. For instance, American author Bell Hooks refers to cultural commodification as “eating the other”. By this she means that cultural expressions, revolutionary or post-modern, can be sold to the dominant culture (see Bell, Hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation, South End Press, 1992).
- 51.
Williams and Windebank (2003).
- 52.
Robert L. Grossman (2012, pp. 173).
- 53.
Mann and Pecant (1891).
- 54.
Russell (2009).
- 55.
Miller (1972).
- 56.
Rifkin (2009).
- 57.
Manno (2000).
- 58.
Jack P. Manno, 2000, pp. 28, footnote 23.
- 59.
Ibid. pp. 30.
- 60.
Ibid. pp. 31.
- 61.
See “Sale of human organs should be legalized”, Independent Newspaper, November 09, 2013 (can be access at http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/sale-of-human-organs-should-be-legalised-say-surgeons-2176110.html.); S. M. Rothman and D. J. Rothman, “The Hidden Cost of Organ Sale”, American Journal of Transplantation; February 13, 2006, pp. 1524–29; and S. H. D, “Regulating the Sale of Human Organs”, Virginia Law Review, Vol. 71, no6, September 1985, pp. 1015–1038.
- 62.
One may sees the above explanations as a simplification of very complex and interdependent issues, which we have no quarrel with. But, retaining simplification does not invalidate the content in which the argument is made, which we believed is the case here. In fact, the propensity to favor simplicity facilitates to detangle an intricate structure and reveal what needed to be observed. Having said that, it is obvious that the issues at hand retain complex structure, but to described or illustrating one’s perception, of a cause(s) does not necessarily entails a polygonal account. Truth is embedded with the amazing power of illumination and resonation.
- 63.
It may seem as a bit unreal title. However, a Google search for the exact title would provides more than 2000 results.
- 64.
Here we used the same examples that Manno used when he made a similar observation (see Jack P. Manno, 2000, pp. 12).
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Carayannis, E.G., Popescu, D., Pirzadeh, A. (2015). The Culture of Information and the Information of Culture. In: Bast, G., Carayannis, E., Campbell, D. (eds) Arts, Research, Innovation and Society. Arts, Research, Innovation and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09909-5_4
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