Information concept

The amount of information in circulation and necessary for the functioning and development of modern society grows approximately in proportion to the square of the development of productive forces. In the countries of the world advanced in scientific and technological development, the share of the labor force engaged in collecting, processing and providing information exceeds the share of the labor force in the sphere of material production. The use of methods and means of automation at all stages of information circulation, the effective organization of its storage, processing and exchange are becoming increasingly important as the main condition for the successful functioning of the economies of countries.

Currently, there is no generally accepted and unambiguous understanding of the term "Information". The range of common concepts is very wide, from the general philosophical - information is a reflection of the real world, to narrowly practical - information is information that is the object of storage, transmission and transformation. There are also discrepancies regarding the place of information in the material world. Is it a property of individual objects or the result of their interaction? Is information inherent in all types of matter, or only in a certain way of organized matter?

In informatics, information is usually understood as a set of information of semantic content that can be collected, processed, transmitted, etc. Moreover, it is information in the original sense of the Latin word informatio, and not data or signals that are carriers of this information. In this understanding, the processes of extracting information from data and their interpretation are inextricably linked with the mind, and the end result of processing and perceiving information with the help of the mind is the disclosure of the uncertainty of knowledge about an object, phenomenon or process. But this approach erodes the very concept of reason.

On the one hand, the existence of any living creature is maintained as long as its senses (sensors) operate, transforming the physical influences of the surrounding world into specially organized signals that reflect data on these influences in a material form. Data is collected and interpreted by a certain system, which in its most general form we call "intelligence", certain information is extracted from the total amount of data, the degree of uncertainty in information about the environment is reduced, and ... the fox unravels the rabbit trail. A living being exists as long as it is able to perceive and process external and internal influences. There is no doubt that in collective communities, its members are not only able to collect and process information, but also transfer it to other community members, like,for example, in a bee colony, the exact path to a productive flower array. The information dance of the bee in this respect is in no way inferior to the telegraph communication in terms of the compactness of its content. Naturally, in the symbolic form accepted by bees.

On the other hand, if information is inextricably linked with "reason", then in this case one cannot deny the "reason" and the electronic computer that beats the world champion in chess, as well as any devices of technical cybernetics of any level, since they all have certain systems for collecting, transmitting, accumulating, storing and processing information of varying degrees of complexity, and on the basis of this information are able to generate feedback signals to control certain processes.

In technical branches of knowledge, where the issues of the relationship between information and reason do not come first, understanding of information prevails in the form of a reflection of such a universal property of matter as diversity, as characteristics of the internal organization of material systems, processes or phenomena in terms of a variety of states that are possible for them. In this interpretation, information exists regardless of whether it is perceived by any "mind" or not, and is one of the properties of material objects. "Information is information, not matter and not energy" (Norbert Wiener). This property is to some extent potential. Information can manifest itself only when objects or processes interact; it can arise (be created) and disappear (be destroyed).

But even in this interpretation, there are a lot of questions to which it is difficult to give unambiguous answers. An insect from the Tertiary period, currently unknown to scientists, stuck to a drop of coniferous resin. A new layer of resin covered the insect. The tree fell and was covered with sand. The resin has turned to amber. Amber potentially contains complete information about an insect, because it contains tens of thousands of DNA fragments - information sufficient for DNA repair and insect reproduction, if not at the present time ,then in the near future. But when did it arise? The moment an insect appears with its DNA? At the moment of sticking to the resin? At the moment of petrification? Can we talk about the emergence of information, if there has not yet existed a subject capable of extracting and using this information? Finally, amber with an insect was found and caught the eye of a paleontologist. A new species of insect has been identified. The first partial information appeared? So maybe the information appears only with an active and purposeful impact on the object of research ? And what if the amber turned out to be opaque and was melted down? Has information disappeared? And can we assume that it was at all?

The answers to these and similar questions gravitate towards two poles, but in essence, towards two diametrically opposite philosophical positions.

Proponents of the first position believe that information is inherent only in a certain way of organized objects or processes, and understand by information only that which can be perceived, processed, interpreted and used, i.e. is the product of a purposeful process of collecting, organizing, systematizing and using information about material objects and processes.

The opposite position is the concept of information as the properties of objects and processes to perceive and process the internal state and external influence of the environment, save its results and transfer them to other objects. From this position, all material objects and processes are sources, carriers and consumers of information, on the basis of which the development of the real world takes place. In essence, this corresponds to the acceptance of the materiality of information and the information basis of the universe.

With the uncertainty of the very concept of information, it can be reasonably assumed that information is manifested, stored and transmitted from one object to another in material - energy form in the form of signals. A signal, as a material carrier of information, can be any physical process (electrical, magnetic, optical, acoustic, etc.), certain parameters of which (amplitude, frequency, energy, intensity, etc.) unambiguously display information data (messages).