Info Systems

"Information is the transfer of form from one medium to another. In the context of human information-exchange, 'communication' is a more descriptive term than 'transfer', and since form is about relationships, we can tentatively define information as the communication of relationships."
- Hans Christian von Baeyer (Information 2005)

Picked up von Baeyer's book Information : The New Language of Science the other day. It reminds me of Emmergence, only more intensively academic. The book has so far been a great pleasure to read (inhale, really). The value and relevance of abstraction in defining information systems is incredible, and an incredible aid to thinking about networks—my main obsession. I'm very sick of reading about the human limitation of inference and historical (biological, chemical, physical... ) contextualization in information and interface design. Proponents of architectural pervasive computing and ubicomp systems seem to forget about adaptability and the value of attribution in the abstract sense. Von Baeyer looks at both sides of the issues in a refreshing way. More to come as I get further into the reading.