A Look At Abstract Investigations

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure to become completely immersed in a work of non-fiction on a topic seemingly ubiquitous in our present day- Information.  Written by James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood attempts to provide a history of how the West first defined and then applied conceptions of information in realms both analog and digital.  I say 'the West' because, outside of the first chapter on West African communicative drumming, the core of the book looks at noted personalities in the U.K. and United States.  Specifically, giants like Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon form the biographical focus.  While the subjects of biography are limited, the scope of the work is not- Gleick should be commended for his tackling of a subject both omnipresent and etherial.  The Information reminded me of another work on a similar abstract topic, that being Adrian Johns in-depth and far reaching work Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg To Gates.  Utilizing the same biographical-narrative approach as Gleick, Johns looks over a much wider scope of history- roughly 400 years- probing the intertwined complexities surrounding the conception, evolution and use of the terms 'copyright' and 'piracy'.  Johns states that development of what we now term 'intellectual property' often lagged behind piratical practices and that distinct revisions of history occurred with the rise of each 'new' conception of the term.

I throughly enjoyed and highly recommend both of the above works.  On one level, I became so engaged due to the superb writing of both authors on the subjects they address.  Yet on another level, one beyond that of technical appreciation, I found both works to be superb illustrations and examinations of a process I encounter frequently when analyzing the behaviors of Russian peasants- that being the reconfiguration of knowledge, often at the local level.  In the case of information theory, the star concept highlighted in Gleick's work, the key development came when Claude Shannon proved that the total informative content of an object (a message, or a picture for example) could be mathematically calculated, so long as one accepted the basic premises that predictable change (knowing that the next number in the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is probably 6) does not constitute 'information', and that any 'meaning' of information an object contains is irrelevant, as this was beyond the scope of mathematical inquiry.  At first glance, this definition of 'information' and the stipulations on its analytical content appears counter-intuitive.  Why would one analyze a letter, or a film, and specifically avoid the question of meaning?  Information, as many now conceive of it, would cease to be if voided of meaning.  Yet Shannon realized, and this was the true genus of his idea, that only by stripping away the subjective nature of information could one objectively measure its content.  He dubbed his objective unit of information a bit, and his later work and ideas would form the foundation of our digital era today.  Several disciplines outside of engineering, biology for one, took inspiration from Shannon's work and reconfigured his ideas to help them analyze their research.  But in order for it all to happen, Shannon had to first take the ill-conceived yet established notion of information and redefine it in a way that could make it mathematically interpretable.      

Johns' work analyzes the shifting definition of a similarly abstract idea akin to 'information'; Piracy.  The crux of his argument lies in the effects reconfiguration of the definition of piracy spurred equal reconfiguration of the definition of intellectual property.  Each new technological innovation that allowed for the greater distribution, or novel distribution, of information prompted new questions as to the nature of ideas and creativity.  When debates on the meaning of piracy began in the early 17th century, many questioned if ideas alone were worthy of protection.  Today, if one looks at the United States alone, not only have the concepts of piracy and intellectual property taken up copious amounts of legal thinking and articulation but they also are undergoing continuing expansion and redefinition as to their breadth.  For example, in the United States one may patent software- in the E.U. one cannot.  In Brazil, HIV/AIDS drugs used for treatment of the disease are 'pirated' via purchase or local production of generic substitutes of currently patented medicines.  Merck sees this as infringement of its intellectual property rights- Brazilian officials see it differently.  How each nation, each locale, reconfigures the definition of 'piracy' impacts on a wide range of issues, software and medical treatments being only a few fields touched.  

Lewis Hyde's work, Common As Air, also addresses this subject- indeed, many people see the current debates over the role digital technologies play in our use, consumption and generation of creative works as the dawn of a new relationship between people and the cultural artifacts that surround them.  What form that relationship will take has yet to be seen, but as Hyde mentions and Johns confirms our current notions and understanding on cultural production stems from debates cemented during the industrial revolution.  Would it be inconceivable that the digital revolution would prompt a similar reevaluation in our present day?

Perhaps the ultimate reason I appreciate these works is that they both take their subjects of inquiry and appreciate the fact that 'Piracy' and 'Information' are results of an intertwined and complex circulating process; the interplay between profesional disciplines and among histories men and women of letters, not to mention the average person and their relations, produces striking results not anchored in the moment of their conception but instead in a variance of motion across time and space.  This is an approach I endeavor to bring to my own work.