"In the 19th century society was transformed by machines that convert one form of energy into another. Steam engines convert chemical into mechanical energy, and elctric motors and dynamos convert electrical into mechanical enery and vice versa. These engineering investions were commopanied by advances in theoretical science, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism. Sometimes the practical implications came first: the steam engine preceded an adequate theory of thermodynamics. Sometimes it was the other way around: Michael Faraday's elucidation of the relation between electricity and magnetism was the foundation of the electrical industry. "Society today is being transformed by machines that convert, not fomrs of energy, but forms of information. When you speak to a friend on the telephone, information in your mind is being converted into a pattern of sound waves in the air, and then into a flucuating electric current in the telephone wire. If the call is a transatlantic one, these fluctuations are then converted into electromagnetic waves (radio waves), before a series of reverse transformations occur at the receiver, and your friend acquires the information that started into your mind. Despite the changes in material form from sound waves to fluctuating electric current, and then to radio waves, SOMETHING IS CONSERVED THROUGHOUT. (my emphasis) That someting is information. Not only telephones, but tape recorders, record players, radios, television sets, and computers are machines that translate information from one form to another. "These engineering developments have been accompanied by, and have to some extent been influenced by , the mathematical theory of information [Shannon?rnb], although it is probably true that engineering applications have usually led the way. But perhaps the most important impact of information technology on pure science has been in biology, and especially in genetics. Code, translation, transcription, message, editing, proof reading, library, synonymous:these are all technical terms, with quite precise meanings in molecular genetics. The influence of information theory on biology has been in producing a way of looking at things, rather in providing mathematical tools."
So whether we are speaking about the latest developments in biology, meme theories of social evolution (see Runciman's critique of Blackmore's The Meme Machine in the latest London Review of Books), transaction cost economics (see Richard Langlois' latest book), the analogy of language to the heredity code in terms of modularity (Maynard Smith), the socio economic impact of the internet, the commodification of knowledge, etc., it is becoming crucial to sort out the hype from the actual epochal shifts in the age of information as technology, commodity and metaphor.
Ian has made mention of Robert U Ayres, who has an extremely technical book by the title Information, Entropy and Progress: A New Evolutionary Perspective. I haven't read it.
We have only a few critical studies so far: Michael Perelman's, Manuel Castell's, a recent Monthly Review book edited by John Bellamy Foster, et al. I understand that Donna Haraway has written some interesting analysis of the theorisation of information in cybernetics.
With that said, I am looking forward to reading Brad's paper and the reply just posted by Wojtek.
all the best, rakesh