Technology, information theory. --- .This section is about information theory. Topics include: ( ) Abstracting. ( ) Catalog. ( ) Comments. ( ) Communal vs. personal. ( ) Content management systems. ( ) Intellectual property. Copyright. Trademark. Patent. ( ) Formats of information. List. Outline. Database. Web. ( ) Found information. ( ) Free Software. Open Source. ( ) Index. ( ) Information. ( ) Keywords. ( ) Library. ( ) Linking. ( ) Ratings. ( ) Searching. ( ) Sorting. --- 1/24/2006
Technology, information theory. --- .This section is about information, what it is and how we deal with it. --- 12/30/2003
Technology, information theory. --- (1) Economics of information. See: Economics, of information. (2) Politics of information. See: Copyright, Patents and Trademarks. --- 9/11/2005
Technology, information theory. --- (1) Everything ever written. How many terabytes of information is that? (2) Everything ever said. How many terabytes of information is that? (3) Everything ever thought. How many terabytes of information is that? --- 3/25/2006
Technology, information theory. --- (1) Person as manager of their own life. Time management. Money management. Information management. (2) Information management means gathering, organizing, storing and reviewing information. (3) Information management techniques include thinking, talking, writing, etc. (4) Information management mistakes. Not gathering information is a mistake. Not thinking is a mistake. Not storing information is a mistake. Not reviewing information is a mistake. Not communicating information is a mistake. --- 3/19/2006
Technology, information theory. --- (1) What to do with information? Gather information. Store information. Organize information. Share information. (2) Why work with information? Information can help save lives. Information can help gain justice. Information can save the world. --- 3/13/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Abstract. (1) In one sense, an encyclopedia is an abstract or summary of all the books that it cites. How much meaning is lost when we read the encyclopedia in lieu of reading the works it cites? How much time and energy is saved when we read the encyclopedia instead of the works it cites? Is the time saved greater than the information lost? (2) In another sense the encyclopedia is a work in and of itself. --- 7/4/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Abstracting is like zipping or compressing a digital file. If we abstracted, or zipped, all the information in the Library of Congress, how much space would we save? 90%? PART TWO. Abstracting is a case of reductionism(?). How much meaning or information is lost when you abstract? How much meaning or information is lost when you merely rephrase? --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Abstracting. (1) Let a symbol stand for a word. (2) Let a word stand for a sentence. (3) Let a sentence stand for a paragraph. (4) Examples. AI stands for artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence stands for the study of computers which mimic human intelligence. --- 3/3/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Abstracting. Also known as "condensation". (1) A table of contents is a type of abstraction of a text. (2) The homework notes you take when reading a book is a type of abstraction of a text. (3) An index is a types of abstraction of a text. (4) Abridged versions of novels are a type of abstraction. (5) Summary, synopsis, outlines, are all types of abstracts. (6) Can we say that natural laws and principles are abstracts of nature? If you can abstract nature can you also abstract a man made work of art? (7) Statistical graphs are abstracts of data sets. Can a text that we call "artistic literature" on the one hand be called a "data set" on the other hand, and then be abstracted using the tools of statistical analysis? Yes, it is done regularly with surprising results. (8) What else can you do to a text beside abstracting it? (A) Burroughs would say cut it up. A computerized randomizer could do the same thing. (B) You could also translate it into another language. (C) You could also put it through a computerized "synonym-izer". (D) A computerized "theme-izer" could extract the theme. A computerized "moral-izer" could extract the moral. A computerized "plot-izer" could extract the plot. A computerized "logic-izer" could extract the logical arguments in the text. --- 9/26/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Abstracting. Most books (and libraries) could be reduced by 90% without much loss by using short synopses. --- 2/19/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Abstracting. Use 1:10 ratio abstracting. Example, a one page summary for a ten page work; and a ten page summary for a 100 page work. --- 3/3/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Abstraction. Is it just as impossible to abstract or condense a text as it is to expand or enlarge a text? --- 9/26/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Abstracts. An abstract is a summary or a brief synopsis of the full text. Abstraction means to have less detail than the original. Less detail is not always a bad thing. For example, a summary report can be a good thing. --- 9/1/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Abstracts. Three types of abstracts. (1) A summary is a type of an abstract. (2) The "sum up" notes are a type of an abstract. (3) An "introduction" is a type of an abstract. --- 6/25/2004
Technology, information theory. --- All information is inextricably mixed with emotion. All information is inextricably mixed with ethics views. Information management systems must have the means to handle emotions and ethics. --- 4/17/2006
Technology, information theory. --- Blogs. Blog readers often expect daily blog updates. One result of the reader's expectation for daily updates is that blog writers sometimes write when they have nothing to say. Another result of the reader's expectation for daily updates is that blog writers sometimes do not rewrite. Although its true that the beatnik writers had a view of "first thought, best thought", it is also true that the beat writers reread and rewrote their work. --- 2/10/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Buried data. Ideas buried in books. Using ratings to bring buried data to the surface. (1) Searching. The problem with using searching to bring buried data to the surface is that with searching you have to know what you are looking for. (2) Sorting by ratings. Sorting by ratings requires that you have sorting capability and rating capability. --- 5/8/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Catalog of ideas showing logical relationships of ideas and historical relationships of ideas. --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Catalog. (1) A catalog of books in a library is similar to an inventory of products in a store. An inventory of products in a store lists each type of product and the number of each product. (2) A catalog of a library is also similar to an index of a book. Catalog, inventory and index all are simplified lists of sets of objects. --- 8/31/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Catalog. Five levels of catalog complexity. (1) Catalog as an alphabetical list of books. (2) Catalog as an alphabetical list of book titles, subject matter and physical location in a library. (3) Catalog as a database of all the bibliographic information about a book, sortable by any field. (4) Catalog as not only about books, but also other media like periodical articles, music, websites, etc. (5) Catalog as a database of ideas rather than a database of media. --- 6/21/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Catalog. Types of catalogs. (1) The catalog of books in a library is like the index of ideas at the end of a book. (2) The catalog of websites on the Internet. Human-created web catalogs (ex. DMOZ and Yahoo). Machine-created web catalogs. --- 6/21/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Catalog. What would a catalog of the Internet look like? Would it look like a directory like DMOZ or Yahoo (i.e., a hierarchical classification system)? Or would it also include full bibliographic information for each link (ex. author, date of origin, etc.)? --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Cataloging. (1) A logically outlined catalog. (2) A catalog that tells you not just what book to look for, but also catalogs the ideas within books. --- 08/04/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Categorizing information (see Psychology, thinking, category and classification). --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Citation. A citation is a reference to an information claim. One can give an information claim a name, like the title of a book or article. --- 8/31/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Citation. A problem with the Internet is that web sites and web pages are moved, deleted, have their content changed, or become pay-per-view after once being free, so how can one reference a web site accurately in scholarly papers? It is like sort of like the situation with out-of-print books, only more complicated. --- 1/4/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Citing works. The performer of a work can be different from the author of a work. The date of a performance can be different from the date of authorship. --- 1/15/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Comments about Comments. A lengthy, well thought out, critical comment can often be more insightful than the work its comments upon. Comments are the property of the commentor, not the property of the site on which they are posted. Nor should a reader's comments be allowed to be deleted by an author who disagrees with them, nor anyone else. To sum up, the commentor has the right to free expression. And the commentor has the right to own and copyright their comments. The commentor has the right to not have their comments be edited. Some websites claim the right to own, edit and delete reader's comments, however, I think that is not the ideal mode. --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Comments on Comments. A cogent comment on a note or idea amounts to another note. A cogent comment can thus stand alone. There is no need to consider a comment to be "appended" to an idea. (2) You can comment about a book, for example, its style, organization, price, typeface, etc. Or you can comment about the ideas in a book. The latter is much more fruitful. (3) Anyone can comment on anything. One simply quotes a source, makes a comment, and then calls it "a comment on so and so". Its been done in texts for thousands of years and does not require complicated computer software. You can then find the comments on an idea by using a search engine to search the Internet for "comments on so and so". (4) Comments from readers can be placed in various locations. (A) They can be located within the text itself. (B) They can be located at the end of a text. (C) They can be located on the website of the commentator. Since it is the commentator's comment I think the latter is best. (5) Whether to let the author edit the reader's comments or not. The author has the right to choose the content on their own website. But the author has less of a right to delete the expression of a reader who makes a comment. For this reason I think the reader's comment should be placed on the reader's website where they are safe and retain the right to free speech. (6) Alternatives: You can have ratings alone. You can have comments alone. You can have ratings and comments. And, one step further, rating the comments themselves is also important. --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Communal vs. personal. In what ways is Notes a personal website and what ways is Notes a communal website? (1) Notes is communal in that everyone and anyone online can read it. (2) To some degree Notes is personal. Notes is personal in that it is just one individual recording their thoughts. Notes is not a debate or even a conversation. Not every website needs to be communal. There is just as much a need for personal websites as there is a need for communal websites, maybe even more. --- 8/18/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Compare. The logic of textual comparison. (1) Compare. Show the entire text and highlight the differences vs. show only the differences. That is, show the text from document A that is not in document B, and show the text from document B that is not in document A. (2) Synchronize. Add to document A the differences from document B. Add to document B the differences from document A. --- 1/4/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Content Management Systems. (1) Php-Nuke (Php based). (2) Post-Nuke (Php based). (3) Scoop (Perl based. Runs the Kuro5hin.org web site). (4) Slashcode (Perl based. Runs the Slashdot.com web site). --- 5/24/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Content Management Systems. (1) Posting policies: anyone can post vs. only registered users can post. (2) Editing policies: anyone can alter (edit or delete) a posting vs. only editors can alter a posting vs. postings are not alterable by anyone. (3) Structural issues: hierarchical structure like a message board vs. non-hierarchical structure like a web of links. --- 9/19/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Content Management Systems. Paul Nervy Notes vs. the others (i.e., Wikipedia, Everything2, Slashdot, message boards, newsgroups, etc.). Describe each of them and how they differ from Paul Nervy Notes. Describe each one in regard to how communal vs. personal it is. Describe each on in terms of the types and degrees of freedom it makes use of. PART ONE. Wikipedia. (1) Wikipedia is not really "art" as defined in some circles, rather, it is a pure encyclopedia in that it aims to gather "just the facts". Paul Nervy Notes, on the other hand, is more like art in that, like poetry and painting, it aims to gather other things than "just the facts". (2) In a similar way, the focus of Wikipedia is not to gather personal opinions primarily (although there is a section of their site for opinions), rather, once again, they want "just the facts". Paul Nervy Notes is more about personal opinion than it is about fact gathering. (3) One question I have about Wikipedia is whose version of a topic gets officially accepted, since anyone is able to modify any entry, and multiple individuals could get into an editing war on any topic. (4) A positive point about Wikipedia is that at least its popular, it gets a lot of hits everyday, and it gets read by many people. That is enviable. (5) Wikipedia is a communal site. Paul Nervy Notes is more a personal site. (6) Contra Wikipedia. On Wikipedia anyone can change anyone else's work. Wikipedians endeavor to "keep a vigilant watch over the recent changes page", but is that a workable solution for individuals who do not have time to watch the change logs full time? In addition, I object based on the grounds that, at some level, everyone has a right to express their opinion without it being deleted when they are not looking. PART TWO. Everything2. Everything2 has a more artistic feel than Wikipedia which deals with "just the facts". The organization of Everything2 is more web-like than Wikipedia's hierarchical classification system. On Everything2 people cannot edit other people's contributions like they can on Wikipedia. PART THREE. Slashdot. Slashdot is more like a message board. Slashdot classifies stories by subject. Slashdot has an interesting rating system that combines number ratings and comment ratings. PART FOUR. (1) Searching. Many of the sites have site-specific search engines to search their sites. However, some of the sites store their data in formats that cannot currently be indexed by Internet search engines. (2) Rating. Many of the sites have systems to let either moderators, registered users or any user rate contributions by using a quantitative method (ex. 1 to 5) and a qualitative method (ex. "Funny", "Informative", "Troll", etc.). PART FIVE. Paul Nervy Notes can be transferred easily onto paper. Many of the other sites, be they html or databases, are less easily converted to printout, thus they have to be on the web. They only exist on the web. In that respect Paul Nervy Notes is more book-like than the others, in a good way. (2) Many of the others use traditional paragraph formatting. Paul Nervy Notes uses short, modular notes. In that respect the others are more book-like, in a bad way. --- 8/18/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Cool idea. A database that can find questions in a text (i.e., find all sentences ending in a question mark), extract the questions, and then sort questions by subject (i.e., sort questions by keyword). --- 2/4/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Create a list of words and phrases. Alphabetize the list. Categorize the words. Create a one line, dictionary definition of each word. Create an encyclopedia entry for each word. --- 1/22/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Definitions of information. (1) Information defined as a meaningful statement. A grammatical, meaningful sentence, even if its not true. (2) Information defined as a meaningful and true statement. (3) Information defined as a signal. For example, the crying of a baby is information that the baby needs to be fed or changed. --- 6/10/2006
Technology, information theory. --- Definitions of information. (1) Information defined as an attempt at meaning, even if not coherent. (2) Information defined as an attempt at truth, even if wrong or false. (3) Information defined as any kind of order, the opposite of entropy or randomness. --- 4/16/2006
Technology, information theory. --- Economics and politics of information. (1) In pure capitalism, if all information was privatized, then whoever first thought of any idea could claim ownership of that idea and try to prevent others from thinking of that idea. That would be a bad situation. That would also be impossible. (2) In pure capitalism, if all information was privately owned and controlled, then every word in the dictionary would be privately owned and you would be charged a royalty fee for every word you spoke or thought. That would be a bad situation. --- 9/11/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Formats for written information: text, docbook, Wiki, database, and HTML. Describe each format and list the pros and cons of each format. (1) Text is basic writing. Pro: ease of typing. Cons: unstructured. (2) Docbook is a subset of XML. Pro: easy presentation. Converts easily to html or text. Con: annoying tags. (3) Wiki is a collaborative, easy to edit, web site. Pros. Ease of use. Internet friendly. Cons: requires wiki software. (4) Database is a collection of structured data. Pro: structured. Con: not so flexible. (5) HTML is a formatting language to create web pages. Pro: easy to put on Internet. Con: annoying formatting tags. --- 3/13/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Formats of information. A web is a loose association of ideas, as opposed to a database, which is a tightly structured set of information. --- 8/31/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Formats of information. Come up with a way to combine outline form and database form. How can one convert back and forth between outline and database? How can one put an outline in a database? How can one put a database in an outline? --- 7/15/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Formats of information. PART ONE. Three formats for information. (1) Database format is arranged in rows and columns. (2) Outline format is arranged in a hierarchical tree. (3) Web format is arranged in a network of nodes and links. PART TWO. How to inter-convert the formats of database, outline and web? That is to say: (A) How to convert database to web? How to convert web to database? (B) How to convert web to outline? How to convert outline to web? (C) How to convert outline to database? How to convert database to outline? (1) Converting database to web: If your database has fields for related keywords then each entry in the database forms a web with each of the keywords associated with that entry. (2) Converting database to outline: If the database has a field for outline levels (ex. 1, 1.1, 1.2.1, etc.) then sorting by that field will put everything in an outline format. --- 12/1/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Formats of information. Ways of storing information. (1) Lists. (2) Ordered lists (numerical order, alphabetical order). (3) Outlines. (4) Spreadsheet or database. --- 7/15/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Formats. A related question is how do you connect a database to a web page? The answer for most people is to use PHP or Perl. --- 1/25/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Formats. Be able to convert between text, database and html. This leads to three pairs of questions. (1)(A) How do you convert from database to text? Export database tables as tab-separated or comma-separated files. (B) How do you convert from text to database? The text must be structured as records consisting of fields. (2)(A) How do you convert from text to html? Paste the text into a web editor and save as html. (B) How do you convert from html to text? Paste from a browser window into a text editor. (3)(A) How do you convert from database to html? Separate the content from the presentation. For example, separate the database records from the html page headers and footers. (B) How do you convert from html to database? Use XML to create tags that define records and fields in the html source code. --- 1/25/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, how to deal with it. PART ONE. One of my interests is distinguishing between how humans deal with the ideas they figure-out for themselves and how humans deal with information they find-out from sources outside their own heads (ex. newspapers, books, websites). My personal solution to deal with ideas I figure-out is to write these Notes. This particular note deals with possible ways to deal with the vast amount of information we find out there. PART TWO. There are basically two types of information, figured-out and found-out. There are basically two types of found-out information, digital information and information on paper. PART THREE. Some people store their found, digital information on their local hard drive, but that is not optimal. It does not really pay to put all your found digital information on your local hard drive for several reasons: (A) Space becomes an issue as information fills your hard drive. (B) Copyright becomes an issue when you take copyrighted information without license. (C) Sharing becomes an issue when your local hard drive is not on the network and thus unable to share. (D) So the basic idea is that we point to found information on the Internet network. This "pointing to information" is what the Internet is all about. (It is also what library science is all about, coincidentally). The big question becomes, how does one organize all the pointers that they have to information that is out there. PART FOUR. There are several basic ways that we point to information, listed in increasing complexity. (A) Links Page: Usually gives a very short name for the information that is linked to. Usually points only to a web page. Links pages are usually organized by subject, although one does see links pages organized chronologically, alphabetically or by various quality rating systems. (B) A more detailed link page eventually develops into something that resembles a bibliography, like those at the end of research papers. A bibliography gives more complete bibliographic information of a work, including title, author, publisher, publication date, etc. (C) A more structured version of a bibliography is one that is formatted into a flat-file text database. A flat-file uses tab-delimiters to create a table of columns and rows. More complete bibliographic information can be included such as media type and comments. This is the level of complexity that I think is perhaps most useful. PART FIVE. The basic idea is that you want a bibliographic information format that you can share (i.e., swap) easily with other people, and you want a bibliographic information format that you can merge (i.e., combine) easily with other people. Let's explore a number of methods that people commonly used to organize the information they find. (A) Web-browser bookmarks or favorites lists: A web-browser bookmark (or favorite) is a link to a website. The main problem with web-browser bookmarks is that they usually do not include full bibliographic information about a link. Another problem with web-browser bookmarks is that they are not always in a well structured format that is easily shared between users and between media. (B) There are proprietary bookmark organizers, but even if they are free of charge one has to have a copy of the software on hand. (C) There are proprietary databases that can structure bibliographic information, but they face the same problems of proprietary bookmark organizers in that one has to have a copy of the software on hand. (D) Non-proprietary databases still require one to have a copy of software. PART SIX. What I prefer for organizing bibliographic information is a character-delimited text file, because it can be imported into any database, spreadsheet, or text editor (word processor or html editor). There are two common types of character-delimited text files: comma-delimited and tab-delimited. I prefer tab-delimited because commas are a commonly used character in bibliographic information itself. PART SEVEN. (A) One objection is that information goes out of date so quickly today that it does not pay to gather bibliographic data. My response is that ideally one is assembling a list of "classic", high-quality works, that will be useful for years to come, even if only for historical purposes. (B) Another objection is some people will say that gathering full bibliographic data about their personal e-library is too much work. Fine, they can keep it as simple as they like. For those who see the usefulness of gathering, organizing and sharing information with the help of bibliographic data, I hope some of these thoughts are helpful. PART EIGHT. So, to sum up this essay: the problem of dealing with all the information you find-out is essentially the problem of dealing with bibliographic information. One solution to this problem is the tab-delimited text bookmark file. --- 12/7/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, how to deal with it. Steps toward a solution of dealing with found information. (1) Come up with an international, generally accepted ideas of what is complete bibliographic information. This step has basically been accomplished with things like the Library of Congress catalog system. (2) Have each webpage and link on the Internet (whether it be to a text file, image file or sound file) include its complete bibliographic information. This step has been accomplished halfway through the use of html meta-tags for title, author, etc. (3) Create web-browsers that grab and incorporate this bibliographic information whenever the browser creates a bookmark. Be able to export bookmarks in well structured tab-delimited text format. And find a way for for browsers to update bad links in bookmark lists. --- 12/8/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, how to deal with it. The problem of bibliographic data consists of two parts: (1) Bibliographic data about online information which anyone can access free of charge. (2) Bibliographic data about physical (non-digital) objects, such as books on paper, paintings on canvas, and music on vinyl, which only a few people can get to and its a pain in the neck even for them. (3) Frankly, the sooner we start focusing on and dealing with free online information, the better. --- 12/8/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, how to deal with it. The question of how to deal with information overflow is the question of how to easily and efficiently gather, store, organize and share information. What we need to do is combine the world of the Internet and the world of the library. Combine the world of websites and the world of books. For example, when you right click on a web-browser bookmark you should be able to see the full bibliographic data of the information it links to, not just the URL. Be able to export this data in a well-structured, tabular, database-friendly format. --- 12/8/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, how to deal with it. Types of access to information. (1) Free access. (A) Paper books at public libraries. (B) Internet access at public libraries. (C) Internet access via "free PC's". (2) Pay access. (A) Buying paper books, magazines, newspapers, etc. (B) Buying Internet access. --- 12/5/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, how to deal with it. Types of bibliographic data: author, date, title, length, level, and rating. (1) Length: Bibliographic data should include the length or size of a work because that can help tell how much time it will take to learn the information in the work. (2) Levels: Bibliographic data should include the level of the work because that can help a person pick something easy enough to understand yet not so easy they don't get any new information. An example of a level of difficulty rating system is: beginner, intermediate, advanced. (3) Ratings: (see ratings). (4) Media type: Bibliographic data should include media type, such as music, film, visual art, book, magazine, newspaper or website. Many media today are mixed-media, which only complicates matters. (5) Style or subject. Works of art are usually categorized by style. Works of non-fiction are usually categorized by subject. (6) Comments: Description of the item. Evaluation of the item can go in the rating section. (7) Online or offline. If online, what is the URL. If offline, where is it located or where can it be purchased. --- 12/8/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, how to deal with it. What to do about information overflow? The answer is for each person to assemble their own electronic library. I call it the personal e-library. The personal e-library will consist of a collection of links to information. The information can be in a variety of forms (ex. text, music, visual arts, film, etc.). The links to the information will be supported by full bibliographic data (ex. title, author, date, and also more subjective information such as rating of quality, level of difficulty and description). --- 12/8/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, introduction to. (See also: Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out). Humans find out or gather information claims from the media like books, newspapers, radio, television, Internet. Sometimes those information claims are true and sometimes those information claims are false. Humans store information claims in memory and writing. --- 8/31/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, other ways to deal. Articles. (1) Find the best, free, online (and paper) journals for all subjects, in order to stay up to date on all subjects. Find your best websites for all subjects. Online is better because you can save articles in digital form. Instead of cutting out and cataloging newspaper articles, just copy Internet pages. (2) Read on-line magazines and book reviews. (3) Build a huge keyword index for all terms (and ideas). Do this by alphabetizing the keyword outline, and throwing in terms from the found maps. --- 10/10/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, other ways to deal. Build an e-library of digital images. Both photographs and paintings. When your computer goes into screen saver, have the images pan by every minute or so. Use the Internet to gather images. Images like forest, ocean, mountains, etc. --- 11/11/1998
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, outline of. PART ONE. Why do it? (1) The knowledge is there so I might as well type it up. (2) Figured out information (i.e., Notes) plus Found out information (this outline) equals a total download of mind. (3) It will help me to summarize the stuff I found out. (4) Open Source it because no one owns it. PART TWO. Why to not do it. (1) Found-out information is not the focus of the Paul Nervy Notes. The Paul Nervy Notes is about Figured-out information. My focus is on the Paul Nervy Notes. (2) Its a bore to type up found information. (3) Its a waste of time, energy and wrists. --- 7/10/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, outline of. .The outline provides background information or contextual information to the Notes. --- 7/12/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, outline of. Alternatives of how to structure the found information. (1) Structure it like the Notes, in distinct paragraphs. Each paragraph being a record in a database. The database being a vocabulary or glossary of a subject area. Nah, maybe not. (2) Structure the found information in a rough outline form? Yeah, probably. (3) Use text format, or perhaps hypertext format, and maybe even database format. Text for now. (4) Use one file or use many files. One file is what I prefer. --- 7/10/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, outline of. Caveats for an outline of Found information. (1) This information is not free of mistakes. There may be information here that is not factually accurate. (2) This information is not complete. This is not all you need to know. (3) This are not necessarily the best ideas. (4) This information is not everything I know. It is not even everything I found out. (5) I did not get the Paul Nervy Notes from the Found stuff, rather I figured it out. --- 7/10/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found information, ways how to deal with it. Various paper and digital methods. (1) Libraries. Collections of books. (2) Links pages. Favorites lists. (3) Blogs. A link page with commentary, organized chronologically and by subject. (4) Footnotes and endnotes. (5) Abstracts. (6) Catalogs. Ex., card catalogs. (7) Encyclopedias. (8) Dictionaries. Glossaries. (9) Content Management Systems. (10) Databases. (11) Graphys. Bibliography - book list. Discography - music list. Filmography - movie list. Pictureography - visual art list. Webography - website list. (12) Newspaper and magazine clippings in file cabinets. (13) Professional journals. --- 8/5/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found notes. Four types of taking notes on books: (1) Lifting direct quotes and putting them in order of importance. (2) Paraphrasing the author. (3) Your interpretations and criticisms of the author. "She is saying..." (4) Your own ideas on the subject. --- 5/10/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Found notes. How to organize the Found notes? By book? By subject? (A) E-books (from project Gutenburg). E-magazines (articles clipped). E-newspapers (articles clipped). (B) Physical books. Physical magazine clippings. Physical newspaper clippings. (C) My found notes. (D) Web favorites list. --- 10/16/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Found outline fields. Keyword > category > definition > date. Or Category > keyword > definition > date. Or just use doc book xml tags for <keyword> <subject> <definition>. --- 2/28/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Found outline. (1) Contra. People might mistake a found outline for the Notes. (2) Pro. I'm not going to let the world go to hell because I failed to put an outline online for free. --- 7/8/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found outline. Its an outline of concept words. (1) No one can own a concept word. You can't copyright, trademark or patent a concept word. (2) No one can plagiarize a concept word. Anyone can use any concept word. --- 7/25/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found outline. Nobody owns a word (unless they trademark it). You can't copyright a word. So an outline of single words is okay, theoretically. --- 7/8/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Found outline. PART ONE. Reasons not to do it. (1) Its kind of a bore repeating the textbooks. (2) If you put up an outline then people will mistakenly believe its all you know. PART TWO. Reasons to do it. (1) Its kind of a waste not to do it. (2) Someone will find it useful. (3) Meld the figured-out data and the found-out data. (4) Nobody owns ideas. Copyright only covers the written expression of ideas. (5) Hack the textbooks. What Linux is to Unix, an outline of ideas can be to a textbook. --- 6/26/2002 ---
Technology, information theory. --- Found stuff, other ways to deal. Book list. Include (1) Basic idea of book. (2) Why book is important. (3) My impressions of the book. --- 10/26/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Found stuff, other ways to deal. Book ratings. (1) A classic: of historical significance. (2) A cutting edge classic: the best of the new. --- 10/26/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Found stuff, other ways to deal. Why the booklist? (1) Part of being educated is knowing good books. (2) Part of communicating knowledge is telling good books you have found. --- 1/6/1998
Technology, information theory. --- Four kinds of indexes. (1) Keyword index: There is a set of keywords associated with every area of knowledge. (2) Question index: There is a set of questions associated with every keyword. (3) Answer index: There is a set of answers for each question. (4) Argument index: There is a set of arguments for each answer. --- 4/11/06
Technology, information theory. --- Free Software and Open Source. PART ONE. Contra Open Source. (1) One reason that some individuals dislike Linux is because they are too lazy to learn a new operating system. One reason that some big businesses loathe Linux is because some people really resent having to learn a new operating system. PART TWO. Pro Open Source. Linux on at the desktop. (1) The tipping point is not when more than half of computer users are using Linux. That is, the tipping point is not when the majority use Linux. The tipping point is the point when enough users adopt the product to cause and inexorable, unavoidable slide (slow or fast) of people adopting the product. The tipping point can be at 5% adoption or it can be at the 75% adoption level. Hopefully Linux on the desktop will have a low tipping point. (2) Like the adoption of scientific ideas (see Kuhn) the adoption of Linux may require the older generation to die before a new generation advances. It may take 20 years. It may require teaching Linux to our kids in school. It may require raising a generation on Linux. --- 1/1/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Free Software and Open Source. Views contra Open Source. One major reason why many corporate business people fear Linux and other Open Source and Free Software is that they fear losing their jobs. It is not merely a general fear that if we switch from Microsoft to Linux some people (example, Microsoft support techs) will lose jobs while other people (example, Linux support techs) will gain jobs. There is a more specific fear business managers have that they as individuals will lose their jobs. As a result, not only do business managers oppose a change to Open Source and Free Software, they also oppose any change whatsoever. --- 1/1/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Free software. Linux. (1) Nobody owns Linux. No one restricts the public from installing or modifying Linux. (2) Linux can be installed for no cost. --- 9/11/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Free. How free to be? Notes is not free for others to alter like some websites are, nor is it free for all to participate in, like some websites are, because Notes is me and I am an individual, and every individual has the right to express themselves without having their words interrupted or altered. PART TWO. Two problems. (1) The problem with allowing anyone to make their own entry is that you get a high "noise to signal" ratio when a great many nonsense, off-topic or fanatical entries are posted, and thus many sites use editors combined with user registration. (2) The problem with allowing anyone to alter anyone else's entry is that one can take away someone else's right to comment. PART THREE. There is no reason it should not be free. Types of free websites include: (1) Free and open, like Wikipedia. (2) Free of charge, yet copyrighted, like Paul Nervy Notes. (3) Free with advertisements, like radio, television, and online newspapers. --- 8/18/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. How free to be? Why keep the Notes copyrighted? Why not GPL (Gnu Public License) it? (1) I want the credit even if its available to read online for free. (2) I do not want other people using my work without attributing it to me. (3) I do not want others selling my ideas. (4) And anyway, in my defense, the Notes are available for reading right now on the Internet. I am just waiting. --- 8/18/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. Open Content issues. (1) The author may or may not want payment for the work. He may want others to be able to read it for free. (2) The author may or may not want credit for the work (i.e., attribution vs. anonymous). (3) The author may or may not mind if other people claim the work as their own. (4) The author may or may not mind other people modifying the work. He may or may not mind modification in the form of annotations vs. actual change of content. He may or may not mind anonymous annotations. There may or may not be a filter or moderator on annotations of content. (5) The author may or may not mind other people selling his work for their own profit. (6) The author may or may not mind reprinting, reposting or mirroring by other people. PART TWO. Three main issues: (1) Credit where due. (2) Recompense or payment. (3) Change management. PART THREE. Free, definitions of. Free vs. owned. Free vs. payment. PART FOUR. What is the difference between patent vs. copyright? Protecting an idea (patent) vs. protecting the expression of an idea (copyright). Should we patent or copyright software? Which do we currently do? PART FIVE. Really you need a license for every combination of the above factors. That would be how many licenses? You could even put a checklist at the start of each document that lists each factor and whether it is licensed yes or no. --- 2/3/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. Open Content issues. We must keep in mind that simultaneous discovery of ideas often occurs. If this is the case, then it is unjust to give ownership of the idea to the person who runs fastest to the patent office. --- 1/31/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. Open Content licenses. (1) GPL for Documentation (www.gpl.org). (2) Open Content License (www.opencontent.org). (3) LDP boilerplate (www.ldp.org). --- 1/31/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. Open Content model. If an author starts a book using the Open Content model and accepts contributions and comments from other people, then, to be fair, the author ceases to be the author and becomes one of multiple authors. At best the author can call himself an editor, but, to be fair, when multiple authors are involved they each deserve a vote as to what content will be included in the book. --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. Open Content projects. Examples of open content groupware, version management, and websites: Twiki. Wiki. Amandooka. Freebook project. Nupedia. Gnupedia. --- 1/31/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. Open Source. Criticisms of the Notes. (1) Devotees of the Open Content model (ex. Linux) might criticize my method (i.e., the Notes) saying, "He does not work well with others. He does not share with others." In response I say that my work is formatted in such a way that a giant database can easily be created by combining the notes of many people. (2) Another criticism of the Notes by Open Source types is that , "He does not listen to others." My response is that the Notes are about helping people develop their ability to figure out their lives for themselves. The Open Source model has many positive points, however, when you borrow a module from someone else you are finding out rather than figuring out. That works for computer software but when it comes to examining one's own life figuring out is also required. --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. The phrase "Open Source" is just as ambiguous as the phrase "Free Software". --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Free. Types of free. (1) Free to add your thoughts, with or without being edited. (2) Free for anyone to change anyone else's writings. --- 9/17/2001
Technology, information theory. --- History of information. In the history of information there is a pattern of people trying to unjustly withhold information from other people. Information is power. People use secrets, lies, censorship and propaganda to reduce or distort the information available to other people. They want all of your information and they don't want you to have any information about them. Just like they want all of your money and they don't want you to have any of their money. --- 4/28/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Idea for a computer program that compares two databases of information based on vocabulary words. The two databases have identical structure (fields) with different content (records). The structure of the database is three fields: Firstly, a vocabulary world (or phrase) field that is the primary key. Secondly, a category field. Thirdly, a definition field. The software will be able to compare vocabulary words, compare categories, and compare definitions. Lets you automatically compare your vocabulary to someone else's vocabulary. A vocabulary being a type of body of information or knowledge, this software will let two people compare and share their knowledge with each other. PART TWO. Compare vocabulary words. (1) Shows words that their database has that your database does not have. Gives you the option to view the word's category and definition. Gives you the option to decide if you want to add the word to your database. (2) Shows vocabulary words that you both have. Gives you the option to compare your word category and definition to their word category and definition side by side. Gives you the option to replace your entry with their entry. Gives you the option to add their entry. Gives you the option to keep your entry without adding their entry. (3) Gives you the option to compare categories and perform the same operations of replace, add, or let stand as is. That is, lets you perform the same operations on the categories and definitions as you can perform on the words. (4) Lets you show words that you have that they do not have. Ego booster! PART THREE. Assumptions of the above software system. (1) Multi-word phrases are treated the same as single words. For example, you can have an entry for "Venus" and also for "The Evening Star". (2) The information in the database is Open Source, and not strictly protected by copyright, so that everyone can share their information with everyone. (3) Any two databases that are compared to each other are identical in structure even though not identical in content. Identical structure lets you compare databases more easily. (4) The databases are structured in a cross-platform language like XML. With XML tags for <word>, <category>, and <definition>. (5) More than one person is doing it. So people are not left alone. (6) Assumes that much of the information in this world is contained in domain-specific jargons which are comprised of unique vocabulary words. This is not completely true but it is true enough to make this project worthwhile. (7) This project also assumes category systems that themselves are made of vocabulary words, which is an interesting thought. And the category systems are flexible, which is also interesting. So that any vocabulary word can be promoted to a category and any category can be demoted to a vocabulary word, which is even more interesting. --- 7/12/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Index. (1) An index is an alphabetically ordered list of keywords, and their location in a book, website, Internet or any other collection of data. (2) An index can also be an ordering (alphabetical, numerical, rating) by any field of the records in a database. (3) A table of contents is a numerically ordered list of the chapters in a book. --- 6/22/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Index. An index is a list of every subject or topic in a work. --- 4/3/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Index. Concordance. A concordance is an index of every word in a text. A concordance describes where every instance of every word occurs in the text. --- 4/3/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Index. Concordance. Easy concordance creation. Take a text. Replace each whites space with a new line, so that every word is on a new line. Sort it alphabetically. Use uniq to count the number of occurrences of each word. Do the same for another text. Compare both lists using compare. Show words they have in common. Show words in only each text. --- 1/22/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Information can be defined broadly as intellectual information and emotional information. This information can be transmitted in the form of text, music, visual arts, or movies. This information can all be put in digitized form. The cost to the consumer is significantly lower (up to 75% lower) when information is in digitized form. --- 1/28/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Information defined as knowledge instantiated. You know a piece of information. --- 3/18/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Information in forms of words, numbers, pictures, sounds. --- 07/08/1994
Technology, information theory. --- Information is a series of symbols that communicates. Information can be true or false. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information management. Personal information. Personal history. Personal goals. Personal abilities. --- 3/19/2006
Technology, information theory. --- Information need. (1) Objective vs. subjective views of what individual needs what information. The subjective view can be on the part of the sender or receiver. (2) What information is needed most, vs. what information is needed next. A person may need one bit of information most, but may need to learn other information first (next), in order to understand the information they need most. --- 10/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information or order vs. disorder or entropy. Chemical compounds represent an increase in order. Life (DNA) is an increase in order. Information (ex. written information) is an increase in order. --- 1/7/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Information problems: ambiguity, vagueness, noise, pollution, junk, garbage, excess verbiage, obviousness, redundancy, trivialness, lies, outdated, unneeded, disorganized, nonsense (words or logic). --- 08/24/1994
Technology, information theory. --- Information production (figure), accumulation (found), transmission, and consumption (get them to read) is key. --- 12/31/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information sum up. (1) Definitions of information. (2) Types of information. (3) Needs for information. --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Information technology deals with libraries and computers. Information theory deals with ideas that apply to both libraries and computers. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information tells you something you don't already know. Knowledge that helps you survive or live better, and that improves your life. Useless information (to you, or to society) is gaining knowledge of a fact that does not help you. --- 01/23/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information transmitted via writing, printing and computers. --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Information, definitions of. (1) Information defined as what we think with. (2) Information defined as what we communicate with. --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Information, definitons of. (1) Information defined as true statements. (2) Information defined as statements that can be proven true or disproven as false. For example, a person makes an information claim, regardless of wether their claim is actually true or false. This definition of information is wider in scope, admiting "informtion claims" even if the person making the claim is wrong or lying. (3) Information defined as including statements that are not necessarily true or false. This definition of information is even wider, admiting things like emotional claims and statements of personal opinion regarding matters of taste. For example, the statement, "Oranges taste good.", is informative even though not neccesarily true or false. Another example, a painting in the style of abstract expressionism in not neccesariy true or false. --- 8/31/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Information, various definitions of: (1) Anything you didn't know before. News. (2) Anything that helps you reach a goal. Useful (3) Any true statement. True. (4) Any data about the environment including sense data. PART TWO. Musings about above views of information (1) Does it have to be new to be information? If you know it already, is it still not information? (2) Does it have to be useful to be information? If its useless to you but useful to another person, is it still information to you? (3) Does it have to be true to be information? (A) What about truth in art? Can a fictional story be true, and thus be information? Even if a fictional story is not considered to be truth, can it still be information? (B) A tautology is true, but is a tautology information? (4) Does it have to be sense data to be information? Are there any other types of information? Is it information only if there is a sentient perceiver? --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) Corporate data is mostly quantitative. But personal data is mostly verbal. We need better software to handle verbal data. (2) Types of verbal data. (A) Scientific: Based on empirical evidence. Uses exact language. (B) Philosophical: Based on argument. Uses exact language. (C) Artistic: Uses allusive and figurative language. --- 4/25/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) How cheap to deliver information? (2) How quick to deliver information? (3) How accurate and truthful? (4) How useful? --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) How much is information going to help? How much can ideas help? How much can thinking help? How much can knowledge help? (2) How much information do I need? How much should I read? How much should I think? (3) How much information is there? How many terabytes? How much information has been created by humans in letter, number or image form? How much information has been digitized and is available on the Internet? How much information remains in paper format? How much information is there in the universe? For example, the information in DNA. How much information is possible? Including past and future information. --- 9/1/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) How to handle complicated data? Break it down into simple data. (2) How to handle much data? How to handle large quantities of data? Structure the data. Then organize the structured data. --- 1/1/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) In the old days information was rare. The point of reading was to fill up time. Longer books were better. (2) Nowadays information is everywhere. The point of view toward information is "You're taking up my time. Don't waste my time." Shorter is better. (3) Many people have not unconsciously understood this transition yet. --- 7/21/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) Information is a crucial component of systems, be the systems of economies, individual humans or even cells in the body which use the information of DNA. (2) Information has economic, political and technological dimensions. (3) There is a need for information. Problems occur when there is a lack of information. There is a need for public information. Disruptions in the flow of information can occur on the supply side (people who do not want to supply information) or the demand side (people who do not want to absorb information. (4) Share information. Do not hoard information. --- 4/29/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) Information you can remember. Facts. Views, principles and theories. Emotions. Thoughts to boot up with. (2) Information you have on hand. Information you have gathered. Information you have written down. --- 10/5/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) The information universe, or media sphere, is the sum total of recorded human knowledge. (2) Each of us takes a path through the information universe. We linger here or there and then move on. (3) I can show you the path I took through the information universe, the books I read, the music I listened to, the visual arts I saw, the movies I saw, the web sites I surfed, the ideas I created. --- 1/15/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) The metaphysics of information. Definition of information. (A) Information is not just text, it can be pictures, sounds, etc. (B) Information is not just ideas, it is emotions too, and thus attitudes. (C) Power of information. An individual's attitude changing for the better can yield better mental health. Mass attitude change yields culture change. (2) The ethics of information. The ethics of information production, distribution, consumption and management is also the ethics of learning, education, etc. (A) Right to information. Right to know about your government, corporations, your child molesting neighbor, etc. (B) Right to a free public education. (3) Cost of information, ease of access. (4) Consumption of information. (A) Sometimes hearing a lecture or seeing a multi-media presentation is quicker and easier than reading one. (B) How much information can you consume in a life? How much can you read, watch, hear or experience in a life? (5) Production of information. How much information can an individual produce in a life? A person can produce about 15MB of text in a life. (6) Methods of production. (A) Information can be recorded with voice recognition software and played back with voice response software. (B) It should be easily convertible to a database, and easily searchable on the Web for all generations. --- 12/29/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) The organization of knowledge in the human mind is not like the organization of information in traditional libraries which use hierarchical classification systems and centralized databases. The organization of knowledge in the human mind is like the organization of knowledge on the Internet which uses keyword search engines and has no centralized database. (2) The key issues are: (A) Hierarchical organization vs. web organization. (B) Centralized information vs. distributed information. --- 12/23/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) To what extent are libraries (and bookstores, and book reviewers) judges of quality (esp. truth)? Do we listen to what the experts like, what the masses like, or what we ourselves like? (2) How can we search ideas out of the middle of books, especially when they are phrased in words other than the keywords we would suspect. Example: All of what author x says about subject y in book z, even if he does not use the word sex but instead uses some other words like screw. Full text search is not sufficient. (3) How much something is "said" (verbally or written). How much something (an idea) is repeated (on lips or in print or in any media). This is akin to how much an author or article is cited in scholarly journals, but on a wider scale. Presence of an idea in the media, versus how many people agree with an idea, consciously or unconsciously, but just never say (articulate, express) it. That is, an idea, whether true or false, may be held by many people, and yet this fact may never be reflected in the media of a culture. Underlying assumptions, etc. (4) How many great ideas are never printed because people did not know that the idea was new, or important, or needed desperately by someone else. Ideas can die this way, and people can die for lack of ideas this way. The idea may have never gotten a historical, logical, importance, or originality placement/rating. Bull shit ideas can be endlessly repeated for the same reasons. --- 10/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information. (1) Vocabulary definitions: information, thinking, ideas, data, knowledge, wisdom. (2) Information activities or tasks: production (creation), distribution (transmission, communication), consumption, selection (based on evaluation, which includes rating), organization, preservation. (3) Actors or participants. Industries involved: publishing, information retailing, education, libraries, media (print, audio/visual, digital). Which of above tasks fall to publishers (distribution), educators (selection), academia (production, evaluation), students (consumption), media (distribution) , professional writers and authors (production), consumers (selection and consumption), libraries (selection, preservation). (4) Information theory and various subject areas. (A) Psychology: thinking. (B) Technology: language, writing, printing, computer. (C) Economics: cost of production, price to consumer. Value (economic vs. utilitarian), quality, how useful is it (enlightening, healthy) (D) Political: censorship vs. free speech. Obscenity, pornography. Hate and violence literature. Personal privacy vs. public knowledge. Government secrecy vs. openness. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information. A big problem in life is information overload. There is too much to know, too much to think about. A solution will be new tools of information management (ex. writing, printing, computers, and what's next). The answer is not ignorance, withdrawal and isolation. --- 8/27/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Information. As information explodes in quantity, the limits of the human mind and the limits of the amount of time available will require shorter and better organized information (and minds!). --- 2/19/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Definitions of information: (1) Anything that tells us something about our environment. Which can be anything. (2) Natural information systems like DNA. (3) Semiotic systems like signs, signals, and symbols. This definition assumes conscious beings are involved. (4) Any statement or proposition, of any type, even if it is not new and not useful. (5) Any statement or proposition, that we previously had no knowledge of (new), and that helps us solve problems in our situation (useful). --- 10/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Definitions. Information vs. entertainment, there is no difference. Entertainment is when it pleases, and you learn nothing new. When it does not please, and you learn nothing new, it is junk. If it is above you, it informs. If you got nothing new out of it, it does not inform. Emotional information vs. factual information vs. skill or behavior information. See art. See information theory. --- 01/23/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Does information have to be storable? What do we call information that cannot be stored? --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Emotion and information. PART ONE. Emotions are information. Emotional expression adds information to a statement. (1) Not all information is expressed verbally. For example, sometimes information is expressed through facial expressions. (2) Not all information is expressed through words, be they spoken words or written words. For example, emotions are information that is often expressed without words, but rather with a look or a tone. (3) And not all information using words is symbolic. That is, you can express information through words in a way that is non-symbolic, for example by adding emotional overtones to words. (4) And regardless, emotions can be expressed verbally with words. For example, by saying explicitly stating "I am angry". (5) And emotions can even be expressed symbolically by using emoticons. PART TWO. Can emotions be represented symbolically? Yes, with emoticons like the smiley, " :) ". PART THREE. When you add emotion to a statement it adds information. Consider, three examples: (1) "I loathe you", he said. (2) "I loathe you", he said smiling. (3) "I loathe you :) ", he wrote. The last two statements contain more information than the first statement. --- 1/1/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Emotional information vs. thought (sentential) information. --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Examples of information management. Underlining texts. Highlighting texts. Margin noting texts. --- 1/2/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Information. For society and for the individual, gathering information is important. Free access to information is important. The media is important. Libraries are important. The Internet is important. --- 12/26/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Forms of information. Information as words and language. Information as numbers and math. Information as pictures and visual arts. --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Gather, organize, store, and send words, numbers, pictures, and sounds. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information. How much information do people really need? How much can they really absorb and use? How much can information really help the world situation? --- 11/30/1996
Technology, information theory. --- Information. It should be a right, like free public schooling, to have a computer and access to the Internet. Information should be a right, or at least very cheap like water, or else free like commercial television. --- 12/26/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Limits of the information age. Most people tend not to get excited about pure symbolic information (for example, text). Most people tend to like their information embodied (for example, most people like text with pictures). Most people like spoken language accompanied by facial expression. Most people like interacting with real objects rather than abstract ideas. This is in part a result of the way humans evolved, as embodied animals in a physical environment. The result is that most people are biased toward stuff. The more life-like the information, the more interesting and fun it is. This is the argument for virtual reality, which photographs and movies are just steps toward. This is also the argument for incorporating information into real life: embed information in real life and people will absorb it faster. On a baser level, one could argue that the real problem is that people are basically lazy and don't want to learn, regardless of information format. --- 12/9/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Information. More people suffer from information underload than information overload. --- 8/30/1998
Technology, information theory. --- Information. People suffer, go crazy, and die, for lack of (1) Best information (found or figured), and (2) Best emotional love. (3) I help with the information side. --- 10/10/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. People's needs for goods and services is not that great. We do not need that much physical stuff. But people's needs for information, in order to develop and grow, is endless. --- 1/28/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Quantity vs. quality of information. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information. The amount of views, both true and false, good and bad, that exist in the atmosphere, not written down, not accessible by others, is large. --- 07/08/1994
Technology, information theory. --- Information. There is a huge amount of information or knowledge (ex. attitude criticism) that academia, artists, journalists, etc. don't touch (because it does not fit into their fields or job descriptions), that I mine. It is mine. --- 12/31/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. They say information wants to be free. Free in terms of price. Free in terms of ability to move through space. --- 10/16/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Thinking and speaking are natural information technologies. Speaking and writing are communication technologies, but they are also information technologies in that they make it easier to store and manipulate information, as well as communicate it. Communication technology relays information. Information technology processes information. --- 01/23/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Thinking over stuff you already know is manipulating information. To suddenly think of a good new idea, or to slowly work an idea out, are both creation of information. Gathering (measuring) and interpreting quantitative or qualitative data is another way to create information. --- 01/23/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Two types of information. (1) Personal information (figured out notes). (A) By you. (B) About you. (2) Non-personal information (found out notes). (A) Not by you. (B) Not about you. --- 4/17/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Types of information. (1) Spoken. Written. Printed. Digital electronic. (2) Information categorized by modes of thought. (A) Magic, myth and religion. (B) Art (lit, music, visual arts, etc.). (C) Philosophy. (D) Science. (3) Verbal. Visual. Musical. Speaking uses the mouth, listening uses the ear. Writing uses the hand, reading uses sight. (4) Information by the senses involved. Taste. Smell. Touch. Sight. Sound. (5) Information classified by the psychological level it takes place at. (A) Sensory and perceptual information. (B) Emotional information. (C) Thought information. (D) Attitude information (a combination of emotional and thought information). (E) BTW, memory can be of sense, emotion, thought or attitude. --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Uses of information. Good uses: science, health, justice. Bad uses: abuse of power, etc. --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Information. What information they need. Cheapest, fastest, easiest way to get it. In what form to give it to them. --- 10/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Information. What is information? PART ONE. (1) Information to a computer. To a computer, a series of symbols means one thing only. (A) A word means on thing only. Thus, a sentence (a collection of words) means one thing only. Thus, a book (a collection of sentences) means one thing only. (B) An icon means one thing only. Thus a picture (a collection of icons) means one thing only. Thus, a movie (a collection of pictures) means one thing only. (C) A number means one thing only. Thus a mathematical expression (a series of numbers) means one thing only. (2) Information to a human. (A) A word can mean many things. Thus, a sentence (a collection of words) can mean many things. Thus, a book (a collection of sentences) can mean many things. (B) An icon can mean many things. Thus, a picture (a collection of icons) can mean many things. Thus a movie (a collection of pictures) can mean many things. (C) A number still means just one thing. A mathematical expression (a series of numbers) still means just one thing. PART TWO. If we say a piece of music (without words) means something, and if music conveys emotion, then music is informational and emotions are informational. PART THREE. If we say an icon symbol means something then a picture (collection of icons) means something, and then a movie (a collection of pictures) means something, and then our perception of real life, much akin to a movie, means something. --- 12/22/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Information. What is information? (1) Forms of information by the media in which they are transmitted: words, pictures, numbers, music. (2) For each of Howard Gardner's eight types of intelligence I say there is probably a corresponding form of information. (ex. kinesthetic, social, verbal, etc.) --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Where is the border between information (ex. symbolically coded facts) and experience (ex. real life, virtual reality, movies, written fiction, etc.)? We read facts. We experience life. There is not clear border between the two. They are a spectrum. --- 6/3/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Information. Who wants to know what, and why? Who should know what, and why? --- 07/08/1994
Technology, information theory. --- Instead of Christmas cards, give a cd-rom with your public notes for the year on it. Give it to your friends. Give it to all major public libraries. Give it to the Internet. Eventually the Internet should let you search by keyword (or question) across many people's notes. --- 02/15/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual freedom issues. (1) National security. (2) Individual privacy. (3) Morals. (4) Hate literature that is offensive or injurious to individuals or groups. (5) Libel and slander. (6) Free speech, first amendment. (7) Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. (8) Cost. (9) Censorship (of what, by who). --- 10/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Patents were designed to protect ideas. Copyright protects the expression of ideas. Trademarks protect the names of products, companies, etc. --- 5/17/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. (1) Copyright of a book, a piece of music, a painting, a movie. (2) Patent of an invention, or of software code. (3) Trademark of a business name or a business slogan. --- 9/11/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright hinders the development of intellectual property as much as it promotes the development of intellectual property because copyright can cause the average individual to develop an attitude of "learned helplessness" toward intellectual property. Their attitude may be "Anything that I can think of somebody else thought of before and copyrighted or patented it and thus owns it. And I would just by thinking be infringing on someone else's property so why bother thinking at all?" This is an unhealthy yet widely occurring unconscious attitude. --- 1/24/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright, intellectual property, and other issues. Copyright as a means to protect the expression of an idea. Patents as a means to protect the invention of a process. Trademarks as a means to protect a logo or slogan. Patents and copyrights are used to protect the rights to the work, in order to spur invention and creativity by giving people monetary incentive to invent and create. No one says you have to patent or copyright an idea. Also, patents and copyrights do no last forever. So what's the problem? (1) Big companies use patent as a monopoly. Big companies then raise prices and exclude people from having the product. (2) A basic philosophical objection is that no one can own an idea, since anyone can think of an idea. History is full of chronologically simultaneous yet geographically separate creations of an idea (ex. Newton and Liebneiz discovering calculus. Darwin and Wallace discovering evolution). --- 12/1/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. (1) First we must insist on the right to keep a single primary copy of a item that we paid for, even if its just for backup purposes. (For example, photocopy a book. Tape a music album. Download a web page. Download an mp3). (2) The next issue is whether to allow a secondary copy, or a copy of a copy. (For example, allow a student to photocopy their friends photocopy of a book. Tape a friend's tape of an album. Download a friend's download of web page. Copy a friend's mp3). (3) We must fight for the right to use photocopies in the classroom. (4) The next question is about Napster and other P2P peer file sharing networks. Should it be legal or should it be stopped? Can it be stopped? --- 1/9/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. By the time copyrights and patents expire the idea is usually stale and outdated, such is the speed of change today. --- 12/30/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. Hack the textbooks. (1) In the USA, most of the school textbooks are the same. (2) The specific prose, the exact wording, of the textbooks is copyrighted, but the general ideas are not. (3) Therefore, anyone can write an "Intro to x" textbook, using the dozens of existing textbooks on the subject as a rough outline of the material, and then make it freely available on the Internet. --- 8/30/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. Just because someone is rewarded (paid) for creating something does not mean the resulting product should not be free for all to use. --- 12/2/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. Some weak arguments for private property (including intellectual property). (1) You invested your capital in it, therefore you have a claim to it. A counter-argument is that in the realm of ideas people often get ideas out of the blue, so they can't say they invested capital in it. An idea can occur to anyone at anytime. (2) Someone has to be responsible for "this thing x". This is the "Plight of the Commons" argument, which says that if we have a public commons then no one will take care of it. However, a counter-arguments is that in today's society, there are many publicly owned commons that we take care of, like public parks, public libraries, etc. (3) Private property serves as a monetary incentive to invent and create. One counter-argument to the money incentive argument is that people often create just for the enjoyment of it. Another counter-argument to the money incentive argument is that people think of ideas in the shower and on the subway. Ideas just pop in your head naturally. --- 12/2/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. The whole idea of intellectual property is perverted when the creators are forced to sell the rights to their work to publishers for a pittance royalty, and then the publisher owns the rights and makes all the money. That is no longer an incentive to create, rather, that is exploitation of the creator and extortion of the consumer. --- 12/2/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. Theoretically, how could one legally work around the copyright laws that protects most current hardcover fiction? Well, no one can stop you from writing a thoroughly researched book report about a book, one which discusses in depth the plot, theme, settings, characters, etc. And you can post your book report for free on the web. Some may argue that this approach is not the same thing as the novel itself. However, what if you added a discussion forum to your website. And what if many readers posted comments about the book. Each person can legally quote a paragraph from the book, with proper attribution, according to the "fair use" copyright laws. And if a few thousand users each quote a paragraph then you will have, in effect, legally recreated the book online for all to view. Scary. --- 8/26/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. To discuss ideas being free, one should discuss other resources that are free, or that were once free. Land, water and air are all finite resources. (1) Land. When the pilgrims first arrived in the Americas there was a seemingly unlimited supply of land. Today, every piece of land is owned by someone, even if its the government. (2) Water. Water was free in the past, but now fresh drinking water is becoming scarce and people are starting to charge for it. The ocean was once considered limitless and free to plunder, but now the ocean is more closely managed so that we do not pollute it nor fish it out completely. (3) Air. The air is free, for now, some people say. However, someday fresh air may not be free. PART TWO. Land, water and air are all finite, physical resources. Ideas are infinite, non-physical resources. Since no one can own them, they are not property. Some people go so far as to say that since no one can own the land or water or air there is no such thing as private property of those natural resources. The final category is the physical things that we make. Things that we put our time, energy and money into. Some would say that since they come from the land no one owns them. Others would say that since you built it, its yours. (See the note on American Indians, Communitarianism and Buddhism). --- 12/2/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Copyright. Two extreme examples: To force everyone to make everything available for free is as bad as having everything privatized into private property. --- 12/2/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Intellectual property. Limits of intellectual property. (1) One can't patent ordinary, everyday, commonplace procedures, like, for example, tying shoelaces. (2) You can't trademark the language out of existence by trademarking each individual word of the language. (3) One can't copyright concepts out of existence. --- 5/17/2004
Technology, information theory. --- It is everyone's duty to think. It is everyone's duty to write down every decent idea they get, for their own good and for others. This would be made easier with small, voice recognizing, wireless computers. It is everyone's duty to act on their ideas. It is everyone's duty to explore (learn) the idea world. --- 07/22/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Keywords. (1) Taking keywords from the text automatically, for example, based on frequency of occurrence. Vs. (2) Adding keywords by hand outside of the main text. (3) This is a consideration of organizing information by "keywords" vs. "categories". However, the issue of keywords seems to be sidestepped when a technology like the Google search engine lets you search any webpages for any keywords. --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Keywords. A library catalog categorizes information at the book level. It is possible to categorize on the idea level (be those ideas on the word level, sentence level or paragraph level) in addition to the book level. On the word level, to the extent that important concepts are given single word names, to that extent you can have a domain of information on a subject consisting of only single words. With such a vocabulary, you can build a machine to compare (calculate, cogitate) one body of knowledge to another body of knowledge. You can compare vocabularies or glossaries from specific subject areas. These subject vocabularies can be combined into a total vocabulary. You can create a vocabulary database that has the word as the primary key and has additional fields for the definition of the word and for the category that the word is in. Adding new information is as easy as adding new words. This is somewhat similar to a dictionary. --- 7/8/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Keywords. Problems with keywords. (1) One problem with keywords is that a word can have multiple meanings. Some classification systems deal with this problem by assigning numbers to keywords. (2) A second problem with keywords. Library catalogs are based on classification systems (Ex. Dewey, LOC) that attempt to assign a subject to a book, as if that is possible. Books are often around 200 pages long, and typically contain ideas on many subjects. Better to assign a subject at the chapter or paragraph level. (3) Another problem is that as knowledge grows, classification systems change. Some concepts go out of date. New concepts are formed. New relationships form between concepts. Pre-set classification systems can't handle this well. --- 6/21/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Keywords. The subjects in a classification system are often denoted by keywords. --- 6/21/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Language and information. Can you put natural language in symbolic form so that a computer can manipulate it? Ideas toward a natural human language that computers can work with: (1) Use exact words. Not metaphorical language. One word having only one meaning. (2) Get rid of pronouns. Get rid of contractions. Get rid of abbreviations. (3) Use S-V-O sentence structure. Do not use compound sentence structures having multiple clauses or phrases. (4) Use syllogistic structure whenever possible. One idea per paragraph. --- 3/3/1999
Technology, information theory. --- Levels of information description. There are several levels of information description. (1) Index: an index is a list of words. (2) Glossary: a glossary is list of words along with a short description of each word. (3) Encyclopedia: an encyclopedia is a list of words along with a full discussion of each word. --- 3/13/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Libraries have electronic catalogs of books. Online bookstores have electronic catalogs of books. But what we really need is an electronic catalog of ideas. Finer granularity, from the book to the idea level. (1) Every idea gets a synopsis or abstract. (2) Every idea gets a list of keywords. (3) Keywords linked in web shaped concept map. (4) Ideas will be: logically explicit; short as possible; exact language; no figurative language; no esoteric words; plain speak. --- 7/21/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Library (the right answers) has latest and best information. Archive (all the wrong answers and reasons why wrong?) has old information and wrong information. --- 11/01/1994
Technology, information theory. --- Library catalogs should have book reviews, and "see also" entries. They should have a thesaurus of logical subject categories, both within the catalog and at the start. --- 01/24/1994
Technology, information theory. --- Library of future. Library in palm of hand. Modem hook up anywhere, or wireless. Links between libraries. Hypertext and hypermedia. --- 08/20/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. (1) Cost to acquire information vs. speed of obsolescence of information. (2) Commercial vendors of information vs. free to public information. (3) Goal: much, cheap, easily accessible, high quality, up to date, information. (4) Recommendations of quality works by subject and level of difficulty (elementary, high school, college, graduate school). --- 12/06/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. (1) Order: (A) Catalog (ID number order). (B) Index (alpha order). (C) Thesaurus (logical subject order). (2) Level: (A) Super-book level. (B) Book level. (C) Sub-book level. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. (1) Political issues: obscenity and pornography. Free speech vs. censorship. (2) Economic issues: costs, prices. (3) Technological issues: digital vs. paper. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. (1) Pro library work. Information management is important for good education, for mental health, and for societal advancement. Knowledge of principles of information management is important. Organization, criticism, rating. Quick, easy retrieval and access. (2) Contra library work. It is not a profession. Professions deal with people's lives. Ex. Doctor, lawyer, accountant. It is not a science. It is a technology. --- 08/24/1994
Technology, information theory. --- Library. A complete library. One can hypothesize a complete library. Everything that exists (every person, place, thing, event, idea) has at least one work created about it in every form of media (print, music, visual art, etc.). Everything that exists has a book written about it, a song played about it, a visual artwork painted about it, a movie filmed about it. And all that information is available on the Internet at no cost to the web surfer. --- 12/16/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Library. Computerization of catalogs, indexes, abstracts, bibliographies, circulation, networks to other libraries, and full text. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. Four rules of library acquisitions. Don't acquire junk. Don't not acquire good stuff. Don't pitch (throw out) good stuff. Don't not pitch (throw out) junk. --- 07/30/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. How computerized will libraries become? Citation only vs. full text (journals and books). Full text with words vs. full text with images vs. multimedia. Local vs. network anywhere. What technological, economic ($), and political resources must be developed to make the change to online libraries? How best to convert to digital? Who will pay for the conversion to digital? Will "the library" be replaced by "the web"? --- 11/20/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. How much will libraries become computerized, and how soon? (full text dbases). How much will libraries be replaced by the Internet to houses? How will number of librarians, users and books change? --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. Instead of building and maintaining a 10 million dollar library building and book collection for a community of 100,000 people, give everyone a computer and Internet access. --- 12/26/1997
Technology, information theory. --- Library. Print vs. digital. Cost to create, decay time, space it occupies, etc. --- 10/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. The library is basically technology, not science or philosophy. --- 08/20/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Library. The new model for a library. No paper books on shelves at all. An Internet PC at every seat, with all the books online in digital format. Print on demand book-making machines to print books as needed. --- 5/29/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Library. Virtual library: anything (words, pictures, sound, film) available anywhere, anytime, to anyone. --- 08/31/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Linking. "See also" cross references are passive links in that they require you spend time following them. Hyperlinks are active links in that they take you there quickly. --- 6/25/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Linking. The phrase "see also" in a text document functions much like a hyperlink in an HTML document. Linking is a way of cross referencing. The Internet is one big cross-referenced text. --- 6/25/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Linking. You can show the text only. Or you can show the links only. Or you can show the text and the links. --- 6/25/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Links. Links are connections. Links are tangents. --- 4/3/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Lists, types of. (1) Lists of random things. (2) Lists of related ideas. (3) List of steps in an argument. (4) Lists in order. Numerical order. Alphabetical order. --- 10/5/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Most important ideas on history, present, probable future, and ideal future of publishing, book retailing, education, libraries, media. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- One part of the solution is making information available. One part of that is making machines and systems that handle information, for example, computers and the Internet. Another part of that is gathering and presenting factual information, for example, in encyclopedias. Another part of that is creating and presenting theories and arguments. That is what I do. --- 1/1/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Outline. An outline is an ordering of information by set and subset. One indicates the levels of an outline by using numbers, letters or icons (Example: 1.A. 2.B.) (Another example is: 1. 1.2. 1.2.1.). --- 8/14/2004
Technology, information theory. --- PART ONE. How to create structured text? (1) Each field element is put on a new line. (2) Double space between records. PART TWO. How to converted structured text to database format? (1) Replace double paragraph marks with a tilde character. (2) Replace remaining paragraph marks with tabs. (3) Then replace the tildes with paragraph marks. (4) Now you have a tab delimited text file that you can import into a database. --- 11/9/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Personal e-library. One big web page, with all web favorites on it, organized by subject, with bibliographic information for each item, plus your comments, plus a link to that site. --- 12/5/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Personal information management (PIM). PART ONE. In the age of paper, people had various tools to organize their personal information. People used diaries to record the details of their day, and to keep a personal history. People had address books containing contact information such as names, addresses, and phone numbers. People made "to do" lists to organize their goals. People wrote on calendars in order to schedule appointments. Sometimes people combined the above functions in something called a daytimer. In addition, people kept newspaper clippings, and old correspondence, filed away in file cabinets. And people kept track of their finances with ledgers. PART TWO. In the age of the computer, people have digital counterparts to the paper tools of personal information management. In the age of the computers, people keep their diary, address book, appointment calendar, and to do lists on the computer. PART THREE. The computer age offers people more options to manage their personal information. People can save all their emails, and then sort or search. People can save all their instant messaging chats. People can save all their web surfing tracks. People can save all their google searches. People can save all their Wikipedia searches. People can save all their bookmarks. PART FOUR. People using the above tools often feel satisfied that they are managing their most important information. However, I think they are managing their least important information. People have in their brains much more important information than schedules and appointments. How to record and manage the truly important information? I feel the Notes method is a useful way to generate and organize important ideas. The Notes is a personal information management system that goes beyond what most people envision. --- 2/18/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Philosophy of information. (1) When we ask, "What is information?", we are asking about the metaphysics of information. (2) When we ask, "How should we act in regard any particular piece of information?", we are asking about the ethics of information. --- 9/11/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Publishing, retail books, libraries, education. How big: people and money, producers and consumers. Temporal development, major players, technological development. --- 01/01/1993
Technology, information theory. --- Random information generators. (1) Create a random number generator. (2) Create a random word generator by listing all the words in the dictionary, assigning a number to each word, and then using the random number generator to pick a number associated with each word. (3) Create a random Noun-Verb-Noun sentence generator by listing the parts of speech associated with each word and then picking a noun, a verb, and then another noun. (4) Create an Adjective-Noun-Adverb-Verb-Adjective-Noun sentence generator by expanding the parts of speech to include adjectives and adverbs. --- 1/15/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Rating information as a way of organizing information by importance or quality. For example, is a four star movie about an important subject, or does it say an important view, or does it have high quality directing, or high quality acting, etc.? --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Rating of thoughts should capture the quantity and quality of thoughts produced. Quality of thoughts can be rated on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being low quality, 3 being average, 5 being exceptionally good. Quantity can be captured by assigning one point per thought. Overall rating of thought = quantity times quality. For example: Ten exceptionally good thought = fifty points. Fifty low quality thoughts = fifty points. --- 8/5/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Rating options. (1) Letting the "masses" do the rating (ex. Measuring box office returns of a film). (2) Letting the "so called experts" do the rating (ex. Measuring how the professional critics review a film). (3) The Internet is more geared toward letting the masses do the rating. (4) One example of a rating system is the Bloghop.com website rating method. Another example of a rating system is the Amazon.com book rating method. I would say that ideally we want to be able to rate at the individual note level, not just the book or website level. For example, was this note helpful to you? Y/N. --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Rating systems. (1) A basic rating system puts a check mark next to good notes. This is a "0 or 1" rating system. (2) A step up in complexity is to put a check mark on good notes and a "x" on bad notes. This is a "-1, 0, 1" rating system. (3) The next step is the "-2, -1, 0, 1, 2" system that uses double check marks and double x's. This is akin to the "one to five stars" rating system. (4) The next step is the "on a scale from 1 to 10" rating system. --- 6/2/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Rating. A rating of the importance of an event can describe both the magnitude of the event and also how good or bad the event was, for example, by using an integer rating scale of negative five to positive five. --- 9/7/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Rating. A rating system of one star for my goals, two stars for ideas that are important to me, three stars for ideas I think would be important to anyone. --- 9/12/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Rating. The challenge of rating is to sort more useful information from less useful information. That is the purpose of ratings. --- 6/22/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Ratings. Bibliographic data should include ratings of its quality. For example, on Amazon.com individual reader ratings are averaged to produce a consensus rating. There are several types of commonly used rating systems and I will point out problems with each. (A) The "1, 2, 3, 4, 5" rating system, also known as the "star" rating system (usually one to five stars): The problem with star rating systems is that a bad website gets one star, yet many people associate a star with merit, so they see a star as meaning a work has merit. (B) The "-2, -1, 0, +1, +2" rating system: The problem with this system is that an average site gets a zero rating, yet many people associate a zero with worthlessness and so they interpret an average site as being worthless. (C) Natural language rating systems (ex. "Bad; Below average; Average; Above average; Excellent."). The problem with natural language rating systems is that one person may not speak another persons language. (D) Smiley face rating system (ex. Frown; Neutral face; Smiley face.) is perhaps the best rating system because it relies on universal human facial expressions of emotion. --- 12/8/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Ratings. Problems with ratings. If you put a five star rating on a note it can have many different meanings including: (1) Its an idea I like. (2) Its an idea I think is original, new, useful and important. (3) Its an idea I think you will like. (4) Its an idea I think you will find to be new, useful and important. PART TWO. Another problem with ratings is that I don't know who you are so how do I give ratings based on you rather than me? (6) I don't know what the "next step" is for you or me. --- 4/15/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Ratings. Ratings can say various things: (1)(A) I think these ideas are my own best, original, new ideas. (B) I think these ideas, from whatever source, are most important. (2)(A) I think these ideas are good for me. (B) I think these ideas are good for everyone. --- 5/8/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Related areas. (1) Technology and information. Abstracts. Searching. Rating. Categorizing. (2) Economics and information. Costs to gather, store, manipulate organize, transmit and dispense information. In oral, handwritten, printed and digital form. (3) Politics and information. Privacy issues. Secrecy issues. What information about an individual or group is available to who. Government (or anyone else) gathering information on its citizens. Government (or anyone else) withholding information from its citizens. Politics of spying, encryption, censorship, propaganda, and the free press. --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Related areas. Relationship of information and mind, thinking and learning. --- 12/26/2003
Technology, information theory. --- Reviews. A book review is an information claim about another information claim. Review, aka criticism, is a second level information claim, or meta-information. --- 8/31/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Search engines. A search can be done for a word, a series of words, or a specific phrase. Boolean operators can be used to refine searches, much like using regular expressions. Searches can be limited or filtered by language, date, etc. The authors of web pages decide what subjects their web page is about and they include that information in meta-tags. Search engine robots or spiders automatically gather web page meta data. The authors of web pages decide if they want their web pages visited by robots and spiders. Search engines also do full text indexing of web pages, so that any word on any page can be searched. --- 6/22/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Search engines. Some search engines let you type a natural language query or question. --- 6/22/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Search engines. Two ways. A search engine can search the Internet at the time of the search. This is the slow way. Alternatively, a search engine can search an index or database of the Internet created before the search is initiated. This is faster. --- 6/22/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Search or find. Search directories and file names. Search for strings within files. --- 8/20/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Search. Its all about easier access to information. Find information quicker and more accurately. Information in the form of words, pictures, sounds, movies, etc. Collections of information like a book, a library, a database, a website, the Internet, etc. --- 6/22/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Searching and Rating. So the big picture is (tbpi) everyone puts their notes online. That is a ton of information to sort through. Two problems occur. (1) Finding the information relevant to a topic. A solution is to organize information by either hierarchical categories or by keywords. Luckily, web search engines organize the entire Internet by keywords. (2) Finding the high quality material, which is a matter of rating information. A solution is to build rating systems into search engines. --- 2/10/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Searching text databases. Searching large text fields is slow. Create an alphabetized keyword index. List every word in the text in alphabetical order, and then list each page or note that has the word in it (i.e., a concordance). Weed out the prepositions and articles (a, the, for, etc.). Leave only nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. --- 12/17/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Searching. (1) A poem about equality or liberty may not contain the words "equality" or "liberty". And as a result, a keyword search of online texts for the words "equality" and "liberty" will not return that poem as a hit. Yet that poem may express crucial ideas about those subjects. This presents a problem for information management. (2) Even worse, certain attitudes (thoughts and emotions) can only be captured by that precise poem. You cannot always "translate" a poem into a philosophical argument. --- 7/13/2000
Technology, information theory. --- Searching. (1) Standard searches. (A) Searching for a keyword. (B) Searching for a series of keywords. (C) Searching for a phrase. (2) Versus, searching for an idea regardless of the synonyms uses. --- 4/23/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Searching. (1) Synonym search. (2) Antonym search. (3) Thesaurus search (i.e., related categories). --- 5/2/2002
Technology, information theory. --- Searching. A search engine that can automatically identify successful searches from unsuccessful searches and then incorporate that information to increase its accuracy will be way ahead of the game. --- 6/22/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Searching. An important principle is that whatever you throw onto the web should be searchable by the current popular web search engines. If your data is locked up in a database, unsearchable by current popular search engines, in the hopes that future search engines will be able to find it, you have defeated yourself. In this respect, Paul Nervy Notes succeeds where Slashdot and Everything2 fail. --- 9/9/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Searching. Creating a concordance or index for a text was a labor intensive activity when done by humans. However, computers make it a trivial task. Thus, when we once had concordances for only a few books we can now have concordances for every book. (Search engines also make it possible to search all texts quickly and easily). A modern electronic concordance or index could show not only the page number that a word occurs in (page numbers being relatively useless because they vary from edition to edition), but also the complete sentence a word occurs in, and also the compete paragraph a word occurs in. Thus if you want to see every thought an author had on any subject you can just search the electronic digitized complete works of the author for all sentences or paragraphs containing the keyword (and their synonyms) in question. PART TWO. One problem would be if the author wrote a statement on a topic without using the keyword. Another problem is media, like the visual arts, that do not use words. PART THREE. This would help only if all texts were digitized and if all texts were open to searching, instead of being available only in paper formats for a cover price. --- 9/19/2001
Technology, information theory. --- Searching. Thesaurus searching. (1) Searching by synonym, related terms or associated terms. (2) Searching by antonym, opposite idea. (3) Thesaurus searching by level. Find word. Find word and synonyms. Find word and any other words in same Roget's category. Find word and any other words in next higher Roget's category. --- 2/10/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Sociology of knowledge. (1) Knowledge is political and social power. (2) What a group agrees is true and important. What they teach and not. What books they carry in library and not. (3) Social mechanisms to produce and inhibit knowledge. Ex. first amendment. (4) Ideas have to be pushed or sold to conquer. How far an idea gets with how much of a push. --- 12/30/1992
Technology, information theory. --- Sociology of knowledge. See: Philosophy, epistemology. > Sociology of knowledge. --- 12/15/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Sort or order. Sort by alphabetical order. Sort by numerical order. Filter results. --- 8/20/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Statistical analysis of texts. PART ONE. (1) What is a statistical analysis of a text? A statistical analysis of a text, at the most basic level, measures the frequency of occurrence of words. (2) Why would anyone do a statistical analysis of a text? Performing a statistical analysis of a text can provide useful information about the text. Statistical analysis of texts can help you measure the quantity of your output. Statistical analysis of texts, when combined with a rating system, can help you measure the quality of your output. Statistical analysis of texts can help you keep track of data, by functioning as a rudimentary text accounting system. (3) How does one do a statistical analysis of texts? A statistical analysis of texts is performed much like how a statistical analysis is performed on any set of data, that is, by counting objects and analyzing the frequency of the occurrence of the objects. Texts can be analyzed on the level of letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. There are similar questions to be asked at each level of text analysis. The GNU/Linux computer operating system has several useful tools for the statistical analysis of texts. PART TWO. GNU/Linux tools for the statistical analysis of texts. (1) "wc" is a word counting program that returns the number of paragraphs, words, and characters in a text file. (2) "ls" is a listing program that returns the number of bytes of file, in addition to providing information about characters, words, and paragraphs. (3) "uniq" is a program that returns the unique lines in a text file. "uniq" also gives the number of times a line occurs. (4) A concordance can be built using a combination of the above GNU/Linux tools. A concordance lists each word in the text, and lists the number of times each word occurs in the text. PART THREE. Letter level text analysis. Definition: a letter is a single character. (1) What is the most commonly occurring letter in the text? (2) What is the least commonly occurring letter in the text? (3) Present the letters of the alphabet in the order of their frequency of occurrence. (4) How do letter frequencies in the text compare to the statistical average of letter frequencies in a large group of randomly selected texts. PART FOUR. Word level text analysis. Definition: a word is comprised of a series of letters. Words are separated by a single white space. (1) Number of words. What is the total number of words in the entire text, all years combined? What is the number of words per year? What is the number of words for any particular subject or category? (2) Word length. The length of a word is measured by the number of letters in the word. What is the shortest word used? What is the longest word used? What is the average word length? How many big words do you use? Do you use short or long words compared to the average writer? That is, how does the average word length in the text compare to the average word length in a large number of randomly selected texts? (3) Word location. Create a concordance, that is, a list of all the words used in the text, and how many times each words is used, and the location in the text that the word occurs. Location in the text can be described several ways. Location can be described by numbering pages and giving the words location on each page, but that is not optimal. Location can be described by numbering the paragraphs and giving the words location in each paragraph, and that is a better approach. Word location can be described by numbering each word in the text and using that number to give the words location. (4) Word frequencies. How many times is a particular word used? Order the words from most used to least used. Give the frequency that any particular word is used. Which word is used most frequently? Which word is least frequently used? What do you write most about most? What do you think about most? PART FIVE. Sentence level text analysis. Definition: A sentence is a string of words that ends with a period followed by two blank spaces. Questions: (1) Number of sentences. What is the number of sentences in the text? (2) Sentence length. What is the shortest sentence in the text? What is the longest sentence in the text? What is the average sentence length in the text? Do you write short or long sentences compared to the average writer? That is, what is your average sentence length compared to the average sentence length in a large number of randomly selected texts? PART SIX. Paragraphs level text analysis. Definition of terms: To the average person, a line is a sentence that ends with a period. However, to a computer, a line is what humans would call a paragraph, because to a computer a line is something that ends in a line break character, not something that ends with a period. And in the Notes, a paragraph is a note. Questions: (1) Number of paragraphs. What is the total number of paragraphs in the text? What is the number of paragraphs per year? What is the number of paragraphs for any particular subject or category? (2) Length of paragraphs. What is the shortest paragraph? What is the longest paragraph? What is the average paragraph length in the text? How does your average paragraph length compare to the average paragraph length in a large number of randomly selected texts? PART SEVEN. Subjects, categories, or keyword phrases. Definition of terms: In the Notes, the words "subject", "category", and "keyword phrase", are sometimes used interchangeably. Each paragraph has a keyword phrase at its start. In the Notes, a category or subject is comprised of a group of paragraphs. In the Notes, the categories represent a level of organization above the level of paragraphs. The categories or keywords are arranged in an outline format. Questions: (1) Number of categories. How many categories are there? If the categories are organized in an outline format, then how many categories are there at each level of the outline. And how many sub-categories does any particular category contain if one counts the sub-categories recursively? Which categories have the most subcategories? Which categories have the most notes? Which keyword phrases appear most often? PART EIGHT. Time analysis, or dynamic analysis. It is useful to analyze a text as it develops through time. Do a statistical analysis for each year of the text. Do a statistical analysis for the entire set of years of the text. PART NINE. Grammar analysis. A dictionary often includes the part of speech of a word. A dictionary will say whether a word is a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc. A text analysis could count the number of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and other parts of speech in a text, and compute the frequency or percentage that each part of speech is used. A text analysis could go a step further and diagram the grammar of each sentence, and then count the number of each type of sentence construction, and then compute the frequency or percentage that each sentence type is used. PART TEN. Text analysis can be used to do many things. (1) Time analysis. Compare an author to his past self or future self. Track changes in an author's style and subject matter over time. (2) Compare one work to another work. Identify similarities and differences between two works. (3) Compare one author to another author by analyzing the lifetime output of each author. (4) Compare a work by an author to a statistical average of that author's entire works. Compare a work by an author to a statistical average of many author's works. PART ELEVEN. (1) Level of difficulty. Some people argue that the longer the words, sentences and paragraphs, the more difficult a text is to read. Some people argue that the longer the words, sentences, and paragraphs, the more intelligent the author. The problem with that is when authors write long to try to appear intelligent. Verbosity in a vain attempt to appear intelligent is a mistake. PART TWELVE. Voice or style. The vocabulary and grammar that an author uses leaves a thumb print of the authors style. The lifetime written output of an individual can be run through a concordance to produce a lifetime vocabulary of the individual. This can help in the attribution of texts, because the presence of vocabulary and grammar that was infrequently or never used by a specific author means that an unattributed text
is less likely to have been written by a specific author. PART THIRTEEN. Summary. Statistical text analysis is a useful tool that can help answer questions about texts. Questions like: "What subjects do I tend to think and write about?", and "How much writing do I tend to do?" The GNU/Linux computer operating system provides several useful tools to help perform statistical analysis of a text. Statistical analysis of a text can be done on the level of letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, and larger levels of organization. Statistical analysis of a large number of texts can be useful for the comparison of a single text to the average of a group of texts. Statistical text analysis is just one method to analyze and understand texts. There are many other methods besides statistical analysis which can be used to analyze and understand texts. Have a nice day. --- 3/14/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Summary. (1) Summarize the keyword using a number. Summarize the sentence using a keyword. Summarize the paragraph using a sentence. Summarize the article using a paragraph. Summarize the book using an article. (2) Summary is a form of reduction. Summary is a form of simplification. Summary is a form of abstraction. (3) Search by any level of summary: number, word, sentence, paragraph, article. --- 1/28/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Take someone's entire life's thoughts, words, writings, and then digitize it into text, pictures, sounds, etc. Then use text analysis and data mining tools to find recurring topics, statements, etc. --- 2/18/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Technology of information: Language. Writing. Printing. Computers. --- 9/11/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Text analysis. Instead of having a list of titles only, or, a step further, a list of titles and their abstracts, one can have the full text of the works. Full text is preferable to have. Google, Amazon and Project Gutenberg are all headed toward full text whenever possible. --- 9/1/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Text analysis. Take a big chunk of text. Number the paragraphs. Number the sentences. Make a concordance that lists every single word in alphabetical order and shows the paragraph number and sentence number that the word occurs in. Find out how many times each word occurs, from most to least. Find out what percent of time each word is used. --- 1/25/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Text analysis. Take an entire library of books. Digitize them so they exist as full text on a computer. Then make a concordance for the set of words of all the books in the library. Determine with what frequency each word occurs for the set of the entire library. Then see with what frequency a word occurs in a specific book. If a word occurs much more often in a specific book than in the entire library then that is what the book is about. One can thus automatically create an abstract of a book by listing the keywords that make that book unique relative to all the other books in the library. --- 8/31/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Text analysis. Text statistics. (1) Word count. Paragraphs (also called lines) (separated by carriage return). Words (separated by white space) Characters. (2) Concordance. List of number of occurances of each word in text. List of location of each word in text. --- 9/10/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Text analysis. What does each word mean in each instance it is used? Because words can have multiple meanings. What does each sentence mean? What does each paragraph mean? What does each chapter mean? What does the entire text mean? --- 1/25/2005
Technology, information theory. --- The Internet is surpassing libraries and bookstores. Web searching is cool. Building an e-library. Ramp up. --- 11/30/1997
Technology, information theory. --- The phone book has a lot of information. How much will it help you to read the phone book? The dictionary has a lot of information. How much will it help you to read the dictionary? More than the phone book. The encyclopedia has a lot of information. How much will it help you to read the encyclopedia? More than the dictionary. --- 1/22/2005
Technology, information theory. --- The steps along the way. Learning, like growing up, is a series of steps. There is an end goal, but also many necessary intermediate phases. --- 9/15/1998
Technology, information theory. --- Three types of text tags. One could use a markup language (ex. SGML, XML) to create attribution tags for every sentence or paragraph. The tags would describe the following types of attributions (1) The idea is quoted from another person. (2) The idea is by the author. (3) The idea is common knowledge or public domain. --- 5/16/2004
Technology, information theory. --- Types of information. Personal information. Group information. World information. --- 3/19/2006
Technology, information theory. --- Various topics in computers and Internet. PART ONE. (1) Text analysis. Text mining. Data mining. Concept mining. These are terms that refer to the process of munging and crunching data to extract useful information. Summarizing, searching, and sorting large sets of data. Humans do better with small sets of data, like sentences and paragraphs. Computers do better with large sets of data, like databases containing millions of records. The data can be in the form of words, numbers, images, sounds, etc. (2) Knowledge discovery. The hope is that data mining will lead to knowledge discovery. Computers can help people draw conclusions about large sets of data. Or perhaps computers can eventually draw the conclusions. (3) Personal information system refers to a set of information that is somehow personal, and the tools used to record, process, store and retrieve that information. Perhaps the above tools of data mining and knowledge discovery can be applied to personal information. PART TWO. (1) Machine learning: if we are going to have artificial intelligence then at some point machines will have to learn. How do you make a machine learn? (2) Natural language processing refers to the hope that eventually machines can process and learn from information that is in the form of human natural language. Instead of making a language that is easy for computers to use, make computers that can understand human language. (3) Knowledge representation refers to the process by which the knowledge in the heads of humans is put into a format that can be used by machines. PART THREE. (1) Semantic web refers to an Internet containing information that machines find meaningful. (2) Taxonomy is a term meaning classification and categorization. (3) Tags are labels used to describe data, and to classify and categorize data. (4) XML is an example of a Web 2.0 technology. XML refers to eXtensible Markup Language. XML lets people create custom tags to describe data, similar to the way that HTML lets people use pre-defined tags to format the content of a web page. (5) Web 2.0 is a term used to describe technologies like XML that extend the capabilities of the web beyond HTML. (6) Collaboration: XML makes it easier for people to work together because XML lets people transfer data more easily between computers. (6) Metadata refers to data about data. XML lets people tag their data with metadata. (7) RDF stands for Resource Description Framework, which is an attempt to create a standard format for describing resources on the Internet. (8) OWL is an twisted acronym for Web Ontology Language, which is a set of terms used to describe Internet resources or objects in the world. (9) There is a debate between two methods of resource description. One view involves using pre-set tags to create a formal taxonomy to describe data, in order to create a standard that makes it easier for machines to exchange data. Another view involves letting people create their own tags to describe data, and this method is known as "folksonomy". Taxonomy versus folksonomy. Regimentation versus creativity. Machine orietnation versus people orientation. (9) Objects, attributes, and relationships. Objects exist in the world of computer programming as well as the real world. Objects have attributes. Objects stand in logical relationship to each other. --- 2/18/2007
Technology, information theory. --- Versions. Multiple versions of a work can exist. Which is the original version? Which is the best version? What are the differences between the versions? --- 9/1/2005
Technology, information theory. --- Web 2.0, take two. (1) Definition: Web 2.0 refers to the latest iteration of the Internet, in which data is tagged to provide metadata. XML is the technology used to tag data with metadata. XML also provides structure to data so that data is more easily processed by computers. AJAX is a technology that allows web browsers to quickly present XML tagged data, for example when one uses the Google Earth web site. (2) Advantages. One advantage of Web 2.0 is that computers can transfer and process data automatically. Another advantage of Web 2.0 is that tagging data with metadata leads to a richer, more informative Internet experience for Internet users. (3) Examples of Web 2.0 websites: Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that lets people tag their bookmarks to that other people can find relevant bookmarks more quickly. Flikr.com is a website that lets people put their photos online, and lets people tag their photos with metadata, so that other people can search for photographs by topic. Google Earth lets people views detailed maps of the Earth in a format that is quick and easy. PART BLAH. Criticism of Web 2.0. (1) How rich are you if you are merely throwing single word tags onto objects? You are about as rich as a graffiti artist. (2) One can argue that Web 2.0 has been vastly over-hyped so that a few people can try to make a quick buck. (3) Do not I tag my notes with a keyword phrase? Have not librarians been tagging books by using catalogs that contain a keywords field? Keywords have been around for a long time. If you make it easy to for people to attach keywords to their data, and if you make it easier to search and sort by keywords, then that is helpful. --- 2/18/2007