What Is Information? PDF
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What Is Information? ELECTRONIC MEDIATIONS Series Editors: N. Katherine Hayles, Peter Krapp, Rita Raley, and Samuel Weber Founding Editor: Mark Poster 55 What Is Information? Peter Janich 54 Deconstruction Machines: Writing in the Age of Cyberwar Justin Joque 53 Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux 52 The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction Hugo Gernsback Edited by Grant Wythoff 51 The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age Darin Barney, Gabriella Coleman, Christine Ross, Jonathan Sterne, and Tamar Tembeck, Editors 50 Mixed Realism: Videogames and the Violence of Fiction Timothy J. Welsh 49 Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet Jennifer Gabrys 48 On the Existence of Digital Objects Yuk Hui 47 How to Talk about Videogames Ian Bogost 46 A Geology of Media Jussi Parikka 45 World Projects: Global Information before World War I Markus Krajewski 44 Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound Lori Emerson 43 Nauman Reiterated Janet Kraynak 42 Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman, Editors 41 Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World Ulises Ali Mejias 40 Summa Technologiae Stanisław Lem 39 Digital Memory and the Archive Wolfgang Ernst 38 How to Do Things with Videogames Ian Bogost (continued on page 189) WHAT IS INFORMATION? Peter Janich Translated by Eric Hayot and Lea Pao ELECTRONIC MEDIATIONS 55 University of Minnesota Press MINNEAPOLIS LONDON Originally published in German as Was ist Information? Kritik einer Legende. Copyright 2006 Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main. All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin. English translation copyright 2018 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 22 21 20 19 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Janich, Peter, author. | Hayot, Eric, translator. | Pao, Lea, translator. Title: What is information? / Peter Janich; translated by Eric Hayot and Lea Pao. Other titles: Was ist Information? English Description: Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [2018] | Series: Electronic mediations; 55 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017022054| ISBN 978-1-5179-0008-3 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0009-0 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: Information science–Philosophy. | Communication–Philosophy. Classification: LCC Z665 .J24 2018 | DDC 020.1–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022054 To the memory of Fernand Hayot: father, reader, scientist This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Translators’ Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix ERIC HAYOT AND LEA PAO 1. Information and Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. Legacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3. Articles of Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4. Information Concepts Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 5. Methodical Repair Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 6. Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Peter Janich: A Partial Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 This page intentionally left blank TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION Eric Hayot and Lea Pao Today, “information” is a concept with an extraordinarily broad reach. It touches on various aspects of engineering, where its lineage goes back to Claude Shannon’s 1948 “Mathematical Theory of Communi- cation.” Via engineering, information enters the arenas of theoretical physics (where it is construed at times as the primary ontological unit of the universe), evolutionary biology (where it figures the relation be- tween organism and environment), and cybernetics (whose feedback loops and recursive structures amble toward the dream of artificial intelligence). “Information” in a post- Shannonian sense also figures in sociology (in the work of Niklas Luhmann or Harold Garfinkel) and in various iterations of the concept of the “information society” (the term makes its first appearance in Masuda Yoneji’s 1976 The Information Society as Post- industrial Society; by 2003, it was the theme for a United Nations– sponsored World Summit in Geneva). “Information” is a major theme in the field of library science (and the schools of informa- tion that foster it); it circulates around the edges of a wide variety of media theory; and it makes its appearance in contemporary anxieties about the rise of Big Data, the promise and threat of the information ix
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