Information in the gaps

(I started drafting this on 10th December, but I was unwell, then there was Christmas and New Year... and it is now 7th January.)

Thanks to Tony Hirst for pointing me to this talk by David Weinberger. Weinberger talks of the importance of what is not said. He refers to the rise of the implicit, what we don't say, the unsaid. I think he's talking about context, a topic that arose repeatedly at an internal seminar exploring 'The Nature of Information' that we had at the OU last October.

If I had time, I would now say something about The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet by Rubem Alves who has a lot to say about this sort of thing, though coming at it from a rather different direction.

I would also, perhaps, though you might take a bit of convincing that it is relevant, say something about 'dark signalling' in optical fibre communication, which was my proposal in my PhD thesis...

The lives of others

I saw The lives of others at the OU Film Society on Wednesday. Picking up on the role of information in the state and how information gives someone power over another, you couldn't ask for a better illustration. It is about the Stasi in East Germany (cf Sheds of Evidence), and their surveillance of a dramatist and his girlfriend. A trivial 'information' point, of course, is that if you were doing it today (as I'm sure some states are) the data would all be handled and stored digitally.

Perhaps more interesting, though, is to wonder to what extent we are willingly making information about ourselves available to the state or anyone else. Personally, I've stopped using my Tesco 'clubcard' for that reason, though I know it is a pretty poinless gesture while I'm still using credit and debit cards, posting on a blog and even putting stuff on Facebook.