VI: Mr Blottisham and the Invisible Parcel (or Mr Blottisham Attempts to Post Information)

St Anselm's Senior Common Room, Mid-Morning

The weather outside had become undecided and was alternating between sunlight and rain with visible uncertainty.

Professor Quillibrace sat near the fire reading.

Miss Elowen Stray had arranged notebooks and papers around herself in an increasingly elaborate geography.

The peace lasted for several minutes.

Then Mr Blottisham entered carrying a large parcel wrapped in brown paper and string.

Quillibrace looked up slowly.

"...should I ask?"

Blottisham lowered the parcel onto the table with considerable effort.

"No need."

"I see."

"I have solved information."

Miss Stray looked interested.

"The entire concept?"

"Completely."

Blottisham tapped the parcel.

"There it is."

Silence.

Quillibrace stared at the parcel.

Then at Blottisham.

Then back at the parcel.

"...you have wrapped information in paper."

"Yes."

"Astonishing."

Blottisham sat down confidently.

"The matter is perfectly straightforward. Information is sent, received, stored, transferred and delivered."

He gestured toward the parcel.

"So naturally information must be a thing."

Quillibrace removed his spectacles with a small sigh.

"I had hoped we might avoid physical demonstrations this morning."

Miss Stray smiled faintly.

"We do speak that way."

"Of course we do," said Blottisham.

"Computers send information. Radios transmit information. Telephones receive information."

Quillibrace folded his hands.

"And thus the familiar picture quietly emerges."

He began counting on his fingers.

"Information exists as a thing."

Blottisham nodded.

"Yes."

"The thing is packaged into signals."

"Correct."

"Signals carry information."

"Precisely."

"Receivers extract the information again."

Blottisham sat back.

"Simple."

Quillibrace regarded him for several moments.

"Mr Blottisham."

"Yes?"

"Where exactly is the information while it is travelling?"

Blottisham blinked.

"...inside the signal."

Quillibrace nodded thoughtfully.

"Marks on paper?"

Blottisham hesitated.

"Yes?"

"Remain marks on paper."

"Oh."

"Electrical impulses remain electrical impulses."

"Oh."

"Sound waves remain changing patterns of air pressure."

Blottisham shifted uneasily.

"Oh dear."

Miss Stray looked up.

"A spoken sentence in an unfamiliar language may communicate nothing."

"Quite."

"The same sentence in a familiar context may change an entire conversation."

Quillibrace nodded.

"Yet the signal itself remains identical."

Blottisham frowned.

"So something else changed."

"Indeed."

Silence settled briefly.

Blottisham looked suspiciously at the parcel.

Miss Stray was writing rapidly now.

"So information begins to lose its object-like character."

"Quite."

Quillibrace leaned back.

"And there is another difficulty."

Blottisham looked apprehensive.

"There always is."

"If information were literally transported..."

Quillibrace steepled his fingers.

"...meaning ought to arrive automatically whenever signals arrive."

Blottisham stared.

"But it doesn't."

"No."

"Signals constantly require interpretation."

Miss Stray nodded.

"Contexts, histories, expectations, relationships..."

"...all participate in what distinctions become meaningful."

"Precisely."

Blottisham looked down at the parcel as if it had become personally unreliable.

"So information is not hidden inside signals."

"No."

"And signals are not carrying invisible informational objects."

"No."

"Oh no."

Quillibrace smiled faintly.

"Suppose instead that information emerges through relations among signals, systems, contexts, and acts of construal."

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

"So signals participate in actualising informational relations."

"Yes."

"Rather than transporting informational things."

"Quite."

Outside the windows sunlight and rain had apparently decided to occur simultaneously.

Blottisham stared at the parcel for some time.

Eventually he spoke.

"I have had a troubling thought."

Quillibrace looked unsurprised.

"As expected."

Blottisham frowned deeply.

"If information is not actually travelling around inside things..."

He looked anxiously at the package.

"...what exactly have I been posting all morning?"

Quillibrace considered this.

"Brown paper and string, Mr Blottisham."

A pause.

"And at considerable expense."