We often speak as if information were a kind of invisible substance moving through the world.
Information is sent.
Information is received.
Information is stored, transferred, carried, and delivered.
The language feels entirely ordinary.
A radio transmits information.
A computer sends information.
A phone receives information.
The same image then quietly expands outward until it begins to explain almost everything.
Neurons transmit information.
Genes transmit information.
Languages transmit information.
People transmit information.
Information begins to appear as a kind of universal currency flowing between things.
The image feels natural.
Yet familiar metaphors often conceal familiar assumptions.
The inherited construal
The inherited picture often assumes something like this:
- information exists as a thing
- this thing can be packaged into signals
- signals carry information
- receivers extract the information again
- communication succeeds when the same information arrives intact
The image feels intuitive because it resembles physical transportation.
A package is placed into a vehicle.
The vehicle carries it elsewhere.
The package arrives at its destination.
The same logic is then projected onto information.
Information becomes an object moving through channels.
Signals become containers.
Transmission becomes transportation.
Yet something curious appears once we look more closely.
The hidden assumptions
Where exactly is information while it is being transmitted?
Is it inside the signal?
A signal by itself appears strangely incomplete.
Marks on paper remain marks unless someone can interpret them.
Electrical impulses remain electrical impulses.
Sound waves remain changing patterns of air pressure.
The same signal can produce entirely different outcomes in different circumstances.
A spoken phrase in an unfamiliar language may communicate nothing.
The same phrase in a familiar context may transform an entire conversation.
The signal itself has not changed.
Something else has.
The apparent object-like character of information begins to weaken.
The fracture
A further difficulty emerges.
If information were literally transported, then meaning should arrive automatically whenever signals arrive.
But signals constantly require interpretation.
They depend upon histories, expectations, contexts, and systems of relation.
A weather report means something different to a farmer than to an airline pilot.
A sentence means something different within friendship than within conflict.
Even biological systems do not simply receive informational packages.
Responses depend upon ongoing patterns of organisation.
The supposedly transmitted object begins to disappear.
Perhaps the problem lies in imagining information as a thing moving through the world.
The inversion
Suppose information is not something transmitted.
Suppose information emerges through relations among signals, systems, contexts, and acts of construal.
On such a view, signals do not contain information in the way containers hold objects.
Signals participate in the actualisation of informational relations.
Information would not exist as an independent substance waiting to be transported.
It would emerge through organised patterns of interaction.
Transmission would not involve moving informational objects from one location to another.
It would involve coordinating conditions under which distinctions become meaningful.
The inversion appears subtle.
Yet its implications are substantial.
Consequences
If information is relational rather than object-like, then communication changes character.
The question is no longer:
How much information was transferred?
The question becomes:
How are informational relations being organised?
Miscommunication changes character as well.
Miscommunication no longer appears merely as corruption during transport.
It becomes a divergence in the organisation of distinctions and meanings.
Even signals change their role.
Signals cease to function as containers carrying invisible informational objects.
They become resources participating in the actualisation of relations.
The world begins to look slightly different.
Messages remain.
Computers remain.
Genes remain.
Signals continue to move.
But perhaps information itself was never travelling between things at all.
Perhaps what we call information was always emerging through the organisation of relations rather than passing through invisible channels.
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