Shreds of evidence

Vitali Vitaliev writing in Engineering and Technology v2 n7 July 07 pp42-43

Shredded STASI file. Aim to get the text (information) from the shredded documents. Uses texture, colour and content details: typscipt, handwritten or stamp print to group shreds together (or rather, the scanned versions of the shreds.

Case-based reasoning

Learning adaptation knowledge to improve case-based reasoning(doi:10.1016/j.artint.2006.09.001)` Susan Craw, Nirmalie Wiratunga and Ray C. Rowe. Artificial Intelligence 170 (2006) 1175-1192

AI systems that use a 'case-base', a database of known problem-solution sets, and generate adaptation knowledge to allow solutions to be deduced for new problems.

Anything on AI is bound to have a big information-theoretic content. In this example, you could look at the information content of the case-base, and explore what's going on when generating adaptation knowledge, among other things.

Identity

Kingdoms of Paper, Natalie Zemon Davis reviewing Who Are You? Identification, Deception and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe by Valentin Groebner, translated by Mark Kyburz and John Peck. LRB 18/10/07

This set me thinking about Michael Frayn's exploration of 'self'.

...he goes on to describe the marks and signs people used to identify themselves to others: authenticating seals, coats of arms, trademarks, insignia.
What's the role of information in authentication?

Authorities relied, then, primarily on words to identify people in official documents.
We can of course readily talk about the information content of words

Scars, birthmarks and moles become central to recognition
It is not too difficult to imagine working out the information needed to describe the presence of a scar, birthmark or mole.

Skin colour was also characterised
Again, we can easily come up with a value for the information needed to express skin colour.

...objects of identification issued by authorities for people to wear or carry
ID cards, which today would be digital documents.

Address

It seems to have worked, to use the new address that I registered for £6.09

Statement of intent

All sorts of things I encounter I find myself analysing in terms of their information. Here I will keep a record.