Keywords

2.1 Classifying Objective Information

Information could be classified in many ways. However, when it comes to studying basic information science problems, nothing is more suitable than classifying them into three basic types: nature information, behavior information, and media information.

2.1.1 Nature Information

Nature information is the first basic form of objective information, directly magnifying the motion states of matter and energy in the objective world. The sun, the moon and the stars, the rivers and mountains, the cities and streets, and the villages and fields display nature information at every moment. So do the tender buds on the trees in spring, the red leaves on the hill in autumn, the white hair on the head of the elderly, as well as the fit body of the young reflected in the mirror. From this, we can see that nature information acquaints us with nature’s spectaculars in the most direct manner. Its main features are as follows:

  • The subjects of nature information are objects in the objective world, such as geographical and astronomical phenomena, architecture and artifacts, and animals and plants. Though there also exists the complicated subjective world for human beings, nature information only reflects external images.

  • Nature information is time-variant. Landscapes may remain the same for a long time macroscopically but are constantly changing microscopically.

  • Objective information could be reflected through both the subject itself and other carriers. The lofty mountains can display their magnificence to the climbers directly. They can also get reflected through other carriers such as water and air in reflections on the water or mirages.

2.1.2 Behavior Information

Behavior information is the second basic form of objective information. It is the indirect reflection of the effects of consciousness and mentalities in the subjective world upon matter and energy in the objective world. Human beings display their state of mood through expressions or languages by laughing and raging. Birds express their longing for survival and courtship through body gestures and sound by flipping and tweeting. Elephants linger around their deceased mate for a long time to show their deep sorrow. All these indicate that behavior information indirectly reflects consciousness and mentalities in the subjective world of human beings and other living creatures through movements, expressions, language, and sound. Its main features are as follows:

  • The subjects of behavior information are consciousnesses and mentalities in the subjective world, such as instincts, desires, judgments, and decisions of human beings, animals, and even some plants and microorganisms.

  • Behavior information is also time-variant. As subjective consciousness is complicated and constantly changing, the behaviors under its control would certainly exhibit different forms at different times.

  • Behavior information could only be reflected indirectly through carriers like a body, sound, tools, and through the subject itself in the form of subjective status.

In the view of the author of this thesis: though devices attempting to peep at the subjective world of human beings, such as lie detectors, have been in existence for over a hundred years, the subjective world of living creatures would never be directly exposed however developed the technology is because the subjective and objective worlds belong to two entirely different categories. It is this fact that makes the existence and development of the world more intriguing.

2.1.3 Media Information

Media information is the third basic form of objective information. It refers to the images stored in the form of matter and energy after collecting, transmission, and processing of nature and behavior information. A large number of social news, figure commentaries, and encyclopedic knowledge recorded in newspapers, journals, and books is a kind of media information available for repeated reading. Audio and video broadcasts over the radio, film, and TV are media information available for repeated listening and watching. The huge amount of various data codes stored on Internet servers worldwide is also a form of media information capable of presenting or supporting the running of all kinds of information systems for their users. Media information records or copies all kinds of nature and behavior information, indirectly presenting the motion states of objects in the subjective and objective world in an enduring manner. It has the following features:

  • The subjects of media information could be both objects in the objective world and consciousnesses and mentalities in the subjective one.

  • Media information is stable in time, making it easy for users to repeat experiencing and processing.

  • Media information can only reflect the motion and changing states of subjects through carriers like paper, bamboo slips, stones, disks, circuits, and screens.

Table 2.1 summaries the basic types of objective information as well as their corresponding connotations and characteristics. It illustrates the typical characteristics of the three kinds of information, i.e., nature, behavior, and media information, in terms of their different noumenon, State Sets, Carriers, and Times.

Table 2.1 Basic forms, connotations and characteristics of objective information
Full size table

Objective information is quite inclusive. In terms of space, we could see starlight from over 100 light-years away and feel it as near as our heartbeat. In terms of time, we could observe something as ancient as the microwave background radiation left after the Big Bang and see something as recent as the scenery that comes in sight upon opening our eyes. In terms of size, it includes the macroscopic as the picture of the whole universe and as microscopic as the movement traces of basic particles in the high energy accelerator. In terms of form, there are both natural scenes familiar to us and data coding stored in various forms of media. Therefore, objective information pervades all living creatures and the vast universe in different forms. We could conduct classified researches on it from multiple perspectives.

Firstly, objective information contains specific content. Bright sunshine and roaring waves belong to nature information. Happy smiles and angry reproaches indicate emotional information. Election debates on TV and newspaper news about leaders reflect political information. Stock prices on the screen and the financial statements of enterprises show economic information. Delicate pictures in a museum and beautiful melodies in the concert represent artistic information. All these kinds of information differ from each other in content, which is where the value and significance of objective information lie.

Secondly, objective information is time-related. Lofty mountains and ancient architectures display their magnificence in an enduring manner. The rising and setting of the sun and the ebb and flow of the tide reflect the periodically changing pattern of nature. Shooting stars flashing through the sky and athletes passing the finishing line leave only a transient impression on us. All these show that objective information can be enduring, intermittent and transient in terms of time. Besides, as objective information comes into existence at different times, their emergence sequence can also serve as an important criterion for information classification. Information of the past is different from that of the present.

Besides, objective information has various carriers. The disposition, shape, color, temperature, and volume of matter could all bear different information. Therefore, matter itself is an important direct carrier of objective information. Meanwhile, as light shows the color of matter, sound reflects the motion state, electric current indicates the movement of an electric charge, the magnetic field shows the geographical position, and force reflects the interaction between matter. All of them are indirect carriers of objective information.

2.2 Characterizing Objective Information

Objective information is quite inclusive. In terms of space, we could see starlight from over 100 light-years away and feel it as near as our heartbeat. In terms of time, we could observe something as ancient as the microwave background radiation left after the Big Bang and see something as recent as the scenery that comes in sight upon opening our eyes. In terms of size, it includes the macroscopic as the picture of the whole universe and as microscopic as the movement traces of basic particles in the high energy accelerator. In terms of form, there are both natural scenes familiar to us and data coding stored in various forms of media. Therefore, objective information pervades all living creatures and the vast universe in different forms. We could conduct classified researches on it from multiple perspectives.

2.2.1 Scene Features

Objective information contains specific content. Bright sunshine and roaring waves belong to nature information. Happy smiles and angry reproaches indicate emotional information. Election debates on TV and newspaper news about leaders reflect political information. Stock prices on the screen and the financial statements of enterprises show economic information. Delicate pictures in a museum and beautiful melodies in the concert represent artistic information. All these kinds of information differ from each other in content, which is where the value and significance of objective information lie.

2.2.2 Temporal Features

Objective information is time-related. Lofty mountains and ancient architectures display their magnificence in an enduring manner. The rising and setting of the sun and the ebb and flow of the tide reflect the periodically changing pattern of nature. Shooting stars flashing through the sky and athletes passing the finishing line leave only a transient impression on us. All these show that objective information can be enduring, intermittent and transient in terms of time. Besides, as objective information comes into existence at different times, their emergence sequence can also serve as an important criterion for information classification. Information of the past is different from that of the present.

2.2.3 Carrier Features

Objective information has various carriers. The disposition, shape, color, temperature, and volume of matter could all bear different information. Therefore, matter itself is an important direct carrier of objective information. Meanwhile, as light shows the color of matter, sound reflects the motion state, electric current indicates the movement of an electric charge, the magnetic field shows the geographical position, and force reflects the interaction between matter. All of them are indirect carriers of objective information.

2.2.4 Significance Analysis

Shannon Information Theory first studies the uncertainty metric of information in communication systems [1], implying that the significance of communication information lies in eliminating uncertainty, which is no doubt reasonable and feasible speculation for communication systems. Subsequent studies define information as the ability to cause changes [2] or the proportion of changes brought to the structural complexity [3], which expands the understanding of the significance of information but still follows the basic thought of Shannon Information Theory to a certain extent. We consider it neither appropriate nor adequate to simply apply the speculations suitable for communication information to objective information.

In terms of the cause of existence, nature information comes into being due to the law of motion in the objective world itself. As for behavior information, though part of it arises from the subjective wish to change or eliminate uncertainties in cognition, many contents, just like expressions of all kinds of emotion by animals, result from species instincts. Media information, which are projection images that record nature and behavior information mainly out of the need to store for replay, is closely related to eliminating and changing uncertainties. However, there are some parts like artistic products which come into existence for sensory and mental enjoyment. So the existence of lots of objective information is not determined by whether it can change or eliminate uncertainty or not.

Therefore, the significance of objective information is not confined to changing or eliminating uncertainties. It also lies in helping the receivers feel the actual existence of the objective and subjective world. In fact, according to studies on cosmic large-scale structure formation and microwave background radiation, it is estimated that only 4% of the cosmos has been perceived, the remaining 23% being dark matter and 73% being dark energy. Dark matter and energy are called “dark” because they cannot produce information perceivable to us, namely objective information.

2.3 Roles of Objective Information

Based on the understanding of the objectivity of information, a large amount of nature, behavior, and media information could change or eliminate uncertainties in specific objects’ cognition. However, the beautiful sceneries outside our window, though not constantly changing our understanding of the view, enable us to feel the beauty of nature all the time. Scenes of beasts chasing prey on the African plains, though not constantly altering the observers’ perception of wild animals, strongly impresses them with the ruthless law-of-the-jungle. The music of the Blue Danube played on digital sounders, though not always strengthening the listeners’ comprehension of the waltz, reminds them of the composers’ briskness and serenity at heart every time it is played. From these examples, it is easy to see that the specific effects of objective information mainly lie in acquainting the receivers of the spectaculars of nature instead of changing or eliminating uncertainties.

The degree of uncertainty that could be changed or eliminated by nature information, behavior information, or media information varies with different receivers, displaying the distinct feature of relativity. However, through these kinds of objective information, it is beyond doubt that receivers feel the existence of the world around them. This indicates that the scope of change caused by objective information is relative, but the fact that objective information can inspire all receivers’ feelings is absolute.

Objective information offers the only way for us to perceive the world. It has great significance and various specific effects, summarized as enabling the receivers to perceive the present, get to know the past, and foresee the future.

2.3.1 Summarizing the History

Getting to know the past is an indirect yet steady effect of objective information on receivers. The annual rings of trees reflect their past growth in the form of nature information. Books and media provide media information that reflects what happened in history. People get to know developments from all ages through these in an indirect yet accessible manner. Through this effect of objective information, the past gets closely and amply correlated to the present.

2.3.2 Perceiving the Present

Perceiving the present is the most transient and most direct effect of objective information on receivers. What people see when they look out is what nature information is in their current view, and what they hear when they talk is the behavior information they are communicating. As the “present” becomes the “past” in the twinkling of an eye, the effect of apperceiving the present is a transient one.

2.3.3 Foreseeing the Future

Foreseeing the future is an important effect of objective information that is easily ignored. We can foresee the success or failure of a hunt by watching the speed of the hunters’ and their prey. An information system could figure out the target’s future location with reasonable accuracy by observing the target’s motion in the past and present. All these exhibit the critical role played by objective information in foreseeing the future. Because of this effect, a mutually traceable relationship gets established among the past, the present, and the future.

The above analysis shows that objective information is the link connecting everything in the world. Without which the world that we live in would be a broken, isolated, and dark one. Thus, objective information is considered one of the three key elements comprising the objective world, equivalent to matter and energy. For such an important subject as objective information, it deserves great effort to study its connotations, the mathematical expressions of its composition, and the mathematical models of its metrics. Only after solving these problems can we further understand the scientific mechanism whereby objective information connects the world and the operation processes and evolution laws of information systems acquiring, transmitting, processing, storing, and applying information.

2.4 Chapter Summary

Information is the link that connects everything in the world. It becomes one of the three major elements that constitute the objective world, and is equivalent to matter and energy. There are issues of objective information, i.e. defining connotation, expressing composition, and metric system. By solving these issues, we can further understand the mechanism of objective information linking everything in the world and the operation and evolution of acquisition, transmission, processing, storage, and application of information in a complex system.