We treat “information” like it\u2019s sterile. Like it\u2019s water you can pour into a hard drive. We ask how many terabytes we need, acting as if data is just some ethereal fluid, quantifiable and clean.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s stranger. Messier. Far more human than we admit.<\/p>\n
When we say “information technology,” we picture sleek laptops, QR codes, ChatGPT, or maybe the dusty telegraphs of yesteryear. We imagine objects. Machines. Channels. Information is the liquid stuff these things move around. It\u2019s a clinical view. One that comes from Claude Shannon.<\/p>\n
Shannon, the father of the modern information age, gave us a definition so precise it feels like a cage. In his 1948 Mathematical Theory of Communication<\/em>, he stripped meaning away. For Shannon, information wasn\u2019t about what a message said<\/em>. It was about how reliably it could travel over a noisy channel.<\/p>\n He cared about entropy. Uncertainty.<\/p>\n Think of it this way: Imagine trying to guess a five-letter word using only yes-or-no questions (or coin flips).<\/p>\n Take “XQZJP.” Random letters. No patterns. To guess it, you\u2019d need about 4.7 flips per letter. 23.5 flips total. High entropy. High cost. High noise.<\/p>\n Now try “LIGHT.” You know the rules of English. If a word starts with ‘l’, the next letter is likely ‘i’, not ‘b’ or ‘x’. You don\u2019t need 23.5 guesses. You need 1.5 per letter. 7.5 total. Low entropy. Predictable. Efficient.<\/p>\n Shannon\u2019s genius was reducing the chaos of communication to this math. He gave engineers the tools to build encryption, compression, and the very backbone of the internet. Every stream, every file, every text you send relies on that math to arrive intact.<\/p>\n But in cutting away the mess to get to the clean numbers, history lost a few scenes.<\/p>\n Because information technology was never clean. It never will be. It\u2019s viscous. It\u2019s gross. It\u2019s biological.<\/p>\n Consider the invention of paper. You probably think of pulp and machinery. But early modern “rag-and-bone men” scoured European towns for their raw material. What were they looking for? Dirty underwear.<\/p>\n Heaping grime-encrusted linens onto carts, they hauled them to riverside workshops. There, the underwear was tossed into vats of noxious oatmeal-like sludge. Grease. Feces. Urea. Fiber. The mix fermented for days. Workers shredded it with razor-sharp knives until it was creamy filth. Then, they poured it into wire frames, pressing out liquid and adding rendered animal fat.<\/p>\n That was paper.<\/p>\n Think about telegraphy. We imagine copper wires and machines. But before that, there were jungle treks. Woodsmen hacked through dense thickets to bring down eighty-foot trees. Their trunks bled gutta-percha\u2014a natural bioplastic from Malay.<\/p>\n Factory workers took that forest blood. They sloshed it over braided, veiny metal cords. They coiled them into spools, loaded them onto ships, and laid them across the ocean floor like hemispheric extension cords. A vast, bathymetric web that pulsed with electricity, carrying stock tips and love letters at the speed of light.<\/p>\n Radio? It started with laborers mining crystals in conditions that bordered on slavery. Refined by precision saw-wielding wizards. Then, sky-wizards who measured the atmosphere, calculating how to ricochet voices off layers of sky to reach crystals in living rooms.<\/p>\n Phonographs? Born from the encrusted defecation of the Laccifer lacca bug. Crushed. Purified. Mixed into a black substance capable of holding grooves so complex the Rosetta Stone would look like wallpaper.<\/p>\n Egg whites. Fish glue. Flour paste. Candle soot. Spermaceti. Rubber bands. Binder clips. Bone records.<\/p>\n Where does the bug shit go when we talk about “clean” information? How did we convince ourselves that data is just zeros and ones floating in a void?<\/p>\n Shannon gave us the math of transmission. He answered how messages travel. But he didn\u2019t ask how humans put<\/em> information in formation. How do we organize meaning from the raw, sticky, weird stuff of life?<\/p>\n The answer is everywhere you look. In the dirt. In the bugs. In the filth. Information isn\u2019t sterile.<\/p>\n It\u2019s alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We treat “information” like it\u2019s sterile. Like it\u2019s water you can pour into a hard drive. We ask how many terabytes we need, acting as if data is just some ethereal fluid, quantifiable and clean. It isn\u2019t. It\u2019s stranger. Messier. Far more human than we admit. When we say “information technology,” we picture sleek laptops, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"wpm_language_slugs":{"cs":"spinava-a-ziva-podstata-toho-co-jsou-informace","de":"die-chaotische-viszerale-wahrheit-daruber-was-information-eigentlich","en":"the-messy-visceral-truth-about-what-information-actually-is","es":"la-verdad-confusa-y-visceral-sobre-lo-que-realmente-es-la-informacion","fr":"la-verite-desordonnee-et-viscerale-sur-ce-que-sont-reellement-les","id":"kebenaran-yang-berantakan-dan-mendalam-tentang-informasi-sebenarnya","it":"la-verita-disordinata-e-viscerale-su-cosa-siano-realmente-le","nl":"de-rommelige-diepgewortelde-waarheid-over-wat-informatie-eigenlijk-is","pl":"brudna-i-zywa-esencja-informacji","pt":"a-verdade-confusa-e-visceral-sobre-o-que-a-informacao-realmente-e","ru-ru":"grjaznaja-i-zhivaja-sut-togo-chto-takoe-informatsija","uk-ua":"brudna-ta-zhiva-sut-togo-scho-take-informatsija"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schooler.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}