Information is interesting. This video claims information is not the medium, therefore not words nor descriptions. There seems to be some validity to this, as explained in the video, but maybe it’s a matter of semantic differentiation. If you follow Ackoff, you have a pretty clear working definition of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom — which is actually pretty standard in many circles. Information is an abstraction of data. Maybe he was talking about data.
As an instrumentalist, I’m not sure how valuable information is as defined by this video. It sounds a bit like information as used in physics, which is not necessarily an abstraction of symbols perceived, but an absolute state of the universe. What do you call that? Information? I guess, but it just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps potential information, or potential data.
Semantic wankery.
