Much ink has been spilled, many theories proposed, indeed, much information has been transmitted with the purpose of delineating a theory of information itself. Information has been equated with digits in binary language, as if all meaning could be translated into computer code and quantified. It has been related to entropy by physicists and analysed as an inverse measure of uncertainty. Neuroscientists speak of the brain as an ‘information processor’ and propose models whereby information is ‘transmitted’ between brain areas. These models treat information as a thing or quantity– indeed, the notion of a non-thing is anathema to science – yet who has ever put his hand on a ‘quantum’ of information?

You are holding a perfect-bound collection of pages bearing text. Are you holding information? What about the images – do they ‘contain’ information? No doubt, there are patterns to be discovered in these pages. We could print a page of alternating 1s and 2s and this would be an uninformative pattern. For something to be information, it must inform something, and that something is you. In other words, information is a pattern that literally changes the patterns in you. So information cannot exist independently of an interpreter, a pattern that it changes by virtue of being information. Thus all attempts to isolate and objectify information must fail.

But surely there is such a thing as objective information. At the present date, February 2009,, Gordon Brown is Prime Minister of the Queen’s government. We don’t acknowledge any attempts to contradict this information . Daft Punk are the most brilliant musicians since David Bowie. The objectivity of this informative statement is not so unquestionable. That Daft Punk are musicians is accepted; whether they are better than Bowie, however, depends on you. Information is always part of a network of propositions, each of which has its own status derived from its relation to the network and to social consensus about its meaning. Information is therefore a piece of a knowledge system, as an organ is a piece of a body.

Human knowledge systems are structures built to correspond to the world. Theories of information have been of interest to philosophers of science, because scientific theories are our most rigorously tested representations of the world’s structure. It was once thought that science was an endeavour to discover true and false propositions – until it was realised that the structure of the world is not organised into propositions at all. According to the philosopher Ronald Giere, we ought best to conceive of the informative matrices of our theories as maps:

“Maps have many of the representational features we need for understanding how scientists represent the world. There is no such thing as a universal map. Neither does it make sense to question whether a map is true or false. The representational virtues of maps are different. A map may, for example, be more or less accurate, more or less detailed, of smaller or larger scale. Maps require a large background of human convention for their production and use. Without such they are no more than lines on paper. Nevertheless, maps do manage to correspond in various ways with the real world.”

Thus maps are in a certain sense objective, without having the contentious property of being either true or false. They just roughly correspond, and are believed to correspond to the extent that they are useful. Maps allow for a plurality of information to be expressed – as, for example, when one adorns a map of Europe with pins denoting the places one has visited. To quote Giere once more:

“Rather than thinking of the world as packaged in sets of objects sharing definite properties, think of it as indefinitely complex, exhibiting many qualities that at least appear to vary continuously. One might then construct maps that depict this world from various perspectives.”

In this way maps allow for a pluralistic blend of sources: 1) information that is conventionally deemed objective i.e. to correspond to reality; and 2) information derived from the unique function of the subject.

Given the above, I believe that human knowledge systems in general are approximately modelled by the familiar internet tool, Google Maps. Here’s why:

Satellite/Terrain/Road view. Google Maps present us with a unified representation of the world that responds to the interests of the subject or user. Whether looking for a travel route, stalking an ex-lover’s neighbourhood, or merely excited by bird’s-eye views of enormous structures, the Google Map is a singular construct that answers according to your concern. If you’re lucky enough to live in one of Google’s favourite cities, you will be able to view transit maps and current traffic updates superimposed on the city’s road maps. Most importantly, if you live in one of these preferred cities you will have access to Street View.

Street View essentially allows the user to dive into the map, viewing any location from the perspective of a subject who is physically there. As a model of human knowledge systems, this feature is profound. If knowledge can ultimately not be objectified, then what we want is the ability to dive into each other’s subjectivities, to view reality from as many perspectives as possible. This has been called inter-subjectivity by some, and it captures an approach to knowledge systems that Giere calls “perspectival realism”. It requires a combination of both perspective and map coordinates to construct an accurate account of knowledge.

Photos. Digging deeper into the subjective, Google Maps allow users to post, to any coordinates of the map, photos they have taken at those locations. Not only do we get a generic perspective, as with Street View, but a highly personal moment in time. More abstractly, this feature is something akin to the hermeneutic tradition in literature – the photo as a subjective creation is analogous to text, and the map coordinates provide the means for reaching an interpretative understanding of the author’s subjectivity.

By this view, human knowledge, i.e. information, consists of a similar structure whether its domain is art or science. Subjective reports, which can vary in degree of generic character, are posted to objective shared coordinates, which correspond in some way to the real world. The growth of knowledge occurs through a constant expansion of content appended to the conventionally accepted coordinates; interpretation of information proceeds through a comprehension of subjective reports accessed through a shared coordinate system. Information, then, is no thing in itself – it is a piece of a thing. Information is teased out of the map by an interpretative encounter with it: a reading of a text, a scientific explanation, or a view of the street.

This article makes reference to:

Giere, R.N. (1994). Viewing Science. PSA: Proceedings of the biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association.  University of Chicago Press.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/192912

Jacob Bauman Levine holds bachelor’s degrees in neurobiology and psychology and is studying for the MSc in philosophy and history of science at the LSE.