INLS 180 Day  Notes

January 15, 2002

 

  1. One-Minute Papers

Big Points

Communication and information have many meanings

The value of a model in reducing complexity

Meaning (rather than info) constructed by receiver

Human need for balancing order and novelty

Perfect order makes communication impossible (comm. implies change)

Compression based on predicting info units.

Design is a form of communication

 

Questions

What is exoinfo (unclear if I said XML info)

Info and meaning relationship?

Information and uncertainty relationship (more choices seems to imply more info, but getting the ‘info’ on the receiver side reduces more uncertainty)

What portion of a message is correctly interpreted? (can we tell?  Distinction between intention of sender and interpretation of receiver, also nature of ‘truth’ and meaning—whether relative or absolute)

What do the latencies to get back to homeostasis imply for the system?

How to incorporate feedback?

Coding techniques vs encryption techniques?

How do we talk about/study the info that people do NOT receive (e.g., lack of understanding)?

Does this apply to visual or aural media?

So what?  Who cares about any of this and how does it apply to XYZ?

 

  1. Information, Communication, and Interaction definitions and overlaps

Class definitions.  Perfunctory and creative.

 

Information senses:

      Thing/object (what we handle, transmit, store)

      Process (act of informing)

      The change in mental state (signal—data—information—knowledge—wisdom)

                        Signal (mass/energy)

                        Data (ordered mass/energy)

                        Information (data in a human)

                        Knowledge (formalized information and skills—represented mentally and/or physically)

                        Wisdom (the experience to know the differences)

 

Communication senses:

            Process involving:

                        Two or more (human) participants (sender/receiver, creator/audience, etc.)

                        Sender (initiator, creator, etc.) has intention

                        Receiver’s mental state changes

                        Time ranges from 0+ to infinite

                        May be unidirectional

            Object

 

Interaction senses:

            Mutual (reciprocal) action (process)

                        Two or more objects (often we are concerned with one being human)

                        Either may initiate, may be unintentional/random

                        States of both objects change

                        Time ranges from 0+ to infinite (but most often concerned with small latencies)

                        Always bidirectional (feedback required, typically multiple cycles)

 

What might it mean to interact with information?   Does information change when we ‘interact’ with it? 

How does digital information affect the possibilities of interaction?

For HII do we also include the inferences and uses made of information?

 

  1. Readings for Thursday

Schramm (Li Zhao and Nancy Wilson)

Tannen (Deborah Williams)

Arkin (Justin Watt)

Maibach (Nan Wang)

 

4. One-minute paper concept

What was the big point you learned in class today?

What is the main, unanswered question you leave class with today?