The Question of Information*

Aldo de Albuquerque Barreto

Senior Research at CNPq, the Brazilian Research Council

Information tunes in the world. Whether as a wave or particle it participates in human evolution and revolution as man pursues his destiny. As an organizing element, information provides man with a point of reference to this destiny; even before he is born, through his genetic identity, and throughout his life by his ability to manipulate information in order to define his own personal odyssey in space and time.

The importance of information in the post-industrial world brings up questions about its nature, its concept and the benefits it may bring to the individual in his or her relationship with the world around him. Linked as it is with the idea of order and diminishing uncertainty, information identifies itself with the organization of systems of inanimate entities or of living rational beings. In this article, however, we shall limit ourselves to the observations and discussion of characteristics and qualities referring to the information phenomenon among human beings, occupying a certain social, political and economic space wherein exists an information generating source or emitter, a transference channel and a destination or recipient of a message with semantic characteristics.

The essence of the information phenomenon has been characterized as the occurrence of a communication process that takes place between the sender and recipient of the message. Thus, the various concepts of information tend to concentrate on the origin and end point of this communication process (Wersig and Neveling, 1975). When one observes from the generator side or when there are definitions, such as the structural, indicating that information is the result of the static relation among material objects,

independently of any human action,or when there is a definition relating only to the message, in which the information is described as symbols produced by a generator to provoke a transference. In these definitions, the recipient of the information is either excluded from the process or is not necessary for its explanation. Definitions of information, when related to the recipient reinforce the semantic intention of transference, adding the idea of message to the concept, its effective use and the action resulting from such use.

Nevertheless, it is the definitions which relate information to the production of knowledge in the individual, that best explain the nature of the information phenomenon, in finalistic terms, associating it with the individuals development and liberty, his immediate group and society as a whole. Here information is qualified as a modifying instrument of the consciousness of the person and his or her group. It ceases to be a measure of organization to become the organization itself; it is knowledge, which occurs if the information is perceived and accepted as such and places the individual in a better stage of living with him or herself and within the world where his or her individual history evolves.

When information is adequately assimilated it produces knowledge, modifies the individuals mental store of information and benefits his development and that of the society in which he lives. Thus, as the mediating agent in the production of knowledge, the information qualifies itself, in form and substance, as significant structures able to generate knowledge for the individual and his group.

The question that arises here is how to work with information as significant structures in the sense of directing it to its proper end of producing knowledge for society. How is information to be organized, controlled and disseminated in a correct manner considering its intervention in the producing knowledge?

INFORMATION PRODUCTION

The production of information, defined by us as significant structures, functions by means of well-defined practices and bases itself on a transformation process guided by a

technical rationality that is specific to it; it represents activities that are related to information gathering, selection, coding, reduction, classification and storage. All these activities are aimed at the organization and control of information stores, for immediate or future use. This repository of information represents a potential store of knowledge and is indispensable so that this occurs in the process of transfer of information. Nevertheless, since it is static, it does not, of itself, produce any knowledge. The meaningful structures that are stored in data bases, libraries, archives or museums can produce knowledge, but become effective only through an act of communication that is mutually agreed between the source and the receiver. Production of stores of information, however, does not have a direct and final commitment to production of knowledge, which fact allows development at different levels. The information production industry has developed alongside the industrial and expansion revolutions and has absorbed some of their major features. The generation of information stores has adopted productivity and technical precepts as its own working method. The growing production of information must be gathered and stored in an efficient way, according to productivity criteria in storage, or rather, the largest amount of informational structures must be placed in the smallest possible space within cost efficiency limits. In this process, techniques are used that are appropriate for information structural reduction. This condensation is a semiotic reduction of the content and of the competence of the information structures for generating knowledge. New languages codes are used in this reduction process, languages that have been created by the transforming instruments of the information industry; the reduction process is further potentiated by the syntactic requirements of the physical storage medium. Thus the universe of the natural human language is reduced, which references the meaningful competence of information with the production of knowledge. This technical attitude certainly represents a policy and economic decision on the part of information producers.

The information industry is organized and differentiated by the degree of its technical organization and control of its information stores, as well as by the political and economic manipulation of these stores. Thus, institutional information stores, processed, managed and controlled for policy and economic use, constitute an infocontext existing with and

permeating an information superstructure, to which are also added the available potential information stores, but not in mass production line, obeying technical processing and continuous storage (Figure l ). The producers located within the info context are public and private corporations, that gather and elaborate transnational information for production and manipulation of stores, thus, whoever owns information stores decides about its distribution and potentially conditions the production of knowledge. Information producers cannot tell the individual how to think but can have an influence on what he thinks (Bagdikian, 1994).

Note: Institutional and free Information Stocks: A,B,C,D,E and F are for example: companies, universities, churches, mass communication media, NGO, government.

The distribution and use of information

Construction of information stocks is focused by a technical and productivity rationale. The distribution or transfer of information, however, is conditioned by a contextual and cognitive restraint. In order to intervene in social life by generating knowledge information must be conveyed and accepted as such. Social spaces are not homogeneous like the technical processing of information stores. The reality, in which it is intended that information act and transform, is multifaceted and made up of social micro groups with differences that are very deep in some countries . These micro groups can be seen as micro

nations that are isolated by their differences. The inhabitants of these social communities differ among themselves by conditions such as: educational level, income, religion, race, access to the formal codes of moral conduct and ethics, access to information, the transference channel, coding and decoding of a common basic writings. These differentiated micro social spaces do not constitute a simple association of singularities; on the contrary, they are organic entities with a strong collective sentiment, organized body of customs, traditions, sentiments and attitudes. They focuses a set of rules, norms, prohibitions and permissions that are conserved and transferred through their own communication channels (Maffesoli, 1984). This differentiation and approximation make the conditions of the dissemination of information its use and assimilation. Information producers are limited by the contextual and cognitive competence of the inhabitants of these different realities; they need, then, to have strategies for distribution their product in an acceptable way. In the accumulation of stored information producers are concerned to continuously increase the quantum of stored information, in order to meet the needs for novelty, quality and coverage of this stock of documents contents. The result of this policy of establishing stocks embodies a continuous and cumulative growth in the amount of information that is stocked. Considering, therefore, the volume and structure of the available information stores, the transfer of information can take place, in the view of the controller, according to three strategies: one strategy that tries to reach and create large homogeneous groups of receivers; another that tries to identify common information interests and needs for differentiated groups; and, finally, a strategy in which the dissemination favors an informational elite.

The first strategy attempts to associate the productivity of the stocks with the productivity of information transfer. It works trying to reach a homogeneous public in its competence for assimilation. Transfers information from the stocks in order to provide only a small amount of knowledge that is common and accessible to a greater number of receivers. In the second strategy, information transfer is directed toward receiver groups with common profiles of assimilations, interests and needs. This transfer is aims to serve a select public, with the competence for reworking the information received and returning feedback to the information stores as new information. This public is familiar with the flow

of information in society, and participates in and uses this flow to solidify its positions in the social space they are and to achieve new positions. The third case the transfer becomes elitist to assist a small group of receivers with access to information that is restricted to other groups, since this elite group has political and economic characteristics that allow them to guarantee and maintain their power to receive differentiated contents.

Within this framework of dissemination positions grow into radicalized positions for in the flow of information creation and consumption. It is worth remembering that a in a reality that is fragmented by social, economic and political instabilities the possibility to access information does not imply any effective creation of knowledge. Democratizing information cannot, then, merely involve programs to facilitate and increase information access. It is necessary that the individual own the conditions for working on the input received, transforming it into a clear and emancipating knowledge, for his own good and that of the society in which he lives.

Democratization of information access is not limited to reproduction of a stage of homogenized social development by the diffusion of a reduced amount of common knowledge which will benefits only the effectiveness of the information stocks and their producers.

The structure of the demand and of information stores

The hierarchy of human needs that determine individual behavior was mapped out by A. Maslow to show the determining factors for motivation and job satisfaction. In his empirical study, Maslow (1970) presents a pyramid of human needs and behavior associating then with each level of the pyramid. We have adapted this in order to attempt to intuitively communicate what would possibly be the demand and supply of information in its basic structure.

In the pyramid of humans needs (Figure 2), an individual would move from the base to the top, passing from one state to another only when all his needs in that particular state have been satisfied. The pyramidal configuration attempts to show a larger number of persons at the base than at the peak. At the pyramid's base there would be those persons who

try to satisfy their basic needs for food, housing, clothing, health, education, with their behavior is fundamentally concerned with satisfying these needs, which represent security to live in a certain space. In these conditions, they would, as a priority, demand information that would be useful for security, order, freedom from fear and threats.

In the next stage above, would be those individuals who, having satisfied their needs for security, aim for a participative behavior to belong to groups whether social or professional at work or in community. They basically want information that will guarantee their secure permanence in the various contexts in which they live and where they wish to stay. They demand for information would be for their own benefit and for the assistance to institutions of which they are a part. At the top of the pyramid are those individuals that have satisfied previous needs and now seek self-fulfillment and look for information for reflection, creativity and for achieving their potential. The the demand it may be concluded goes from the base to the peak.

It is understood that the supply of information, or rather, the structure of the stocks is related to the demand like an inverted pyramid, inversely proportional in terms of quantity and quality to the positions of the information sought (Figure 3), configuring a situations of an excess of information at its extremes. It should be noted here that the models presented radicalize positions in order to make the example clearer, and should be viewed with the flexibly of a model for explanation.

Information stocks and assimilation

In a temporal relation, information is as a particle that contributes in forming information stocks, it is so associated with linear time; the time of facts that have occurred chronologically. Information gathers in stocks, in a continuous way and aggregates in as in a fixed repository. The volume and growth of these stocks are directly proportional to continuous linear time. But, these stocks emanate information waves to reach its users and to fulfill their mission of transforming particles of information into waves of knowledge. The time expended in the conscious reflection to enlargement of it is not the linear time of the information stocks.

Source: Adapted from Maslow, A.H. - Motivation and Personality, N.Y.Harper;1970

Figure 3

The person, who reflects, as a conscious being, is placed in a space between the past and the future, in a time that repeats itself in cyclic way placed on an imaginary point of a line that joins the past and the future. This position of information assimilation is not simply a point in the present time, but rather a point of consciousness in which cognitive abilities are influenced by the experiences in the past and all the hopes for the future, without ever being possible to conceive of an absolute beginning or end of it (Arendt, 1991).The region of the spirit that accepts information as knowledge can be represented as in Figure 4, adapted from Arendt (1991).

Figure 4

Knowledge, potentially stocked in information stocks, accumulates exponentially in structures that serve as its repository. Even when entry filters are used to qualitatively limit the growth of these stocks, the entire growing thing will tend to fall into pieces from its own weight, unless changes are made in the relative proportions of the structure and its physical content (Thompson, 1917).

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More than 350 years ago, Galileo (Bell, 1973) formulated, in his principle of similitude, that no biological organism or human institution that undergoes a modification in size resulting that a change in scale, does so without modifying its form or conformation. Galileo was following a mathematical principle defined as the "Law of the Squared Cube", that is, if the volume (of information) grows in a cubic ratio and the surface containing it (the structure of the stocks) increases only by a square ratio, will occurs a process of structural differentiation. This means that an organization will separate itself in two,

differing one from the other in structure and function, but being functionally equivalents to the less differentiated organization.

The analogy of these concepts to linear and exponential growth of information stocks leads to believe that growing storage structures will tend to "break" into specialized and distinct structures, that will allow to deal with the problem of accumulation and distribution in a more adequate way. Smaller information infrastructures will appear aimed at the interests and needs of special user groups, in which production and circulation functions can be directed toward promoting an adequate innovating effect of knowledge assimilation.

SOME FINAL POINTS

To conclude our reflection it is important to note that for the information sector, supply and demand do not balance each other as in the traditional markets. In the context of information exchange market it is the supply that creates the demand for information. In the situation of a possible marketplace, information producers are responsible for the overall supply of information which will define the demand on its various levels. Demand for information is fragmented into differentiated social micronuclei, distant even in its ability to decode the information discourse.

The information producer decides which information items will be stored and the tactics for disseminating it among society. He also decides about the technological "packaging" to be used in such dissemination. Some of these distribution packages or channels are so intensive in emerging technology that they may be mixed up with the content, that is, the channel is more valued than the message, as it often occurs with

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electronic information networks diffusion. The information producer is able to manipulate the availability of information and how to access to it. However, he cannot control its use or its assimilation related to knowledge. In the world of information production and distribution, the supply can create the demand, but cannot transform this demand into dynamic action, which, by means of assimilation, generates knowledge and promotes development, the final goal of information as a knowable phenomenon.

Thus, a large part of the static information stocks are transformed into plain information discourse, or just a formally elaborated manifestation of interest. The information discourse, independently of it technological trappings, uses a common code, generally language and all adequate communication channel; but despite its power to convince and its promise of the truth, the discourse only particularizes an information perspective. Its only owns the power of action when it gains the condition of a message, with specific intention and possible assimilation. As action, information is changed into an attitude with dynamic strength that fulfills itself in reality when modifying this reality according to its intention. Bad translated and not internalized information discourses will form surpluses in the stocks of information that belong to the producers; these surpluses that do not create wealth in the form of knowledge and lead only to a big social cost.

Aldo de Albuquerque Barreto, Ph.D Senior Research at CNPq, the Brazilian Research Council Professor at the Graduate Administration Program at Unigranrio *This paper was written and published in Portuguese as A Questo da Informao.

References ARENDT, H. A Vida do Espirito, Rio de Janeiro, Ed. UFRJ, 1991. (Chapter 4: The Gap between the Past and the Future.) BAGDIKIAN, B.H. O Monoplio da Mdia. So Paulo, Scritta, 1994. BELL, D. O Advento da Sociedade Ps-Industrial. So Paulo, Cultrix, 1973. See Chapter 3. The Dimensions of Knowledge. MAFFESOLI, M. A Conquista do Presente. Rio de Janeiro, Rocco, 1984. MASLOW, A.H., Motivation and Personality. New York, Harper, 1970. THOMPSON, D., On Growth and Form. Cambridge,, England, first edition, 1917 . WERSIG, G. and NEVELING, U., "The phenomena of interest to information science. The Information Scientist, v. 9, n.4, 1975.