BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

INFORMATION (Degradation of) 1)2)

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J.de ROSNAY discusses in the following way the progressive degradation of information: "Information which circulates in a channel becomes irreversibly degraded. This implies a very significant analogy with energy, which degrades… through entropy. For example if we make a mold of some statue and cast from this mold another statue from which we make another mold, it is highly probable that after a score of successive operations of this kind, the final form of the statue will be highly distorted…

"To transmit information, energy must be spent. This energetic medium for information consists of light rays, sound waves, electric current in a telephone wire or the flight of the bee which transport pollen from one flower to another. This energy becomes weaker and scatters. It must be canalized and amplified. Moreover as the precision of some measurement needs to be greater, more energy must be spent" (1975, p. 169-170).

Thus is introduced the interrelation between entropy and information, both of which evolve in the time dimension.

→ ("Information half-life).

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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