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Reflections on Information
Arthur Lyon Dahl
Information as a concept and currency
We talk a lot about information and an information society, with artificial intelligence one of the recent manifestations, and giant enterprises capturing and using information to maximise their profits. One particular challenge is that information, when abstracted from its uses, is essentially intangible. It is independent of the platform on which it is stored and the means of its transmission. Take language, for example. It can be spoken, written down, printed in a book, digitized and communicated over the Internet as an image of letters and words or as spoken sound, but the meaning is independent of any of these.
Information can also be static or dynamic. The former is like written text in a book, available and preserved as long as the book exists and its language is still understood. But in this form it has no impact. When someone reads the book, the information is transferred into the brain and consciousness of the reader, where it can have an impact and be used, performing some service or inspiring and guiding some behaviour.
From the perspective of the science of systems, information is what determines how the system is organized, how its components fit together, communicate and interact, and how it evolves and maintains itself dynamically over time. It can have different roles and operate at different scales, from the information enshrined in atoms that determines how they combine into molecules, to the values that determine what is just or unjust in a society.
Information in this broad sense is at the heart of all human development and organization. It is the foundation of civilization, and more advanced civilizations have much greater information content. Therefore considering in some rational way the amount of information in each component of society, how it is mobilized and used in the functioning of the social system, and whether it is growing and contributing to social progress, or regressing and being lost, would describe an essential element of what is necessary for human well-being.
Human information can take many forms and have different purposes. Science, for example, is the accumulation of information about the physical universe, the natural world, the principles of physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and our own physical and psychological functioning, as well as tools of science such as mathematics and computer programming. Language is another tool we have created to communicate, record and preserve human information, to tell stories, describe history, and transmit thoughts, ideas and feelings in literature, for example. Art is another way to share information, whether a representational picture or sculpture or a more abstract sharing of emotion or a sense of beauty that resonates in others. Cave paintings are some of the earliest records of human information communicated through art to have survived. Music transmits information of another kind, including emotions, through our sense of hearing. Then there is the information on capacities of the human body encoded in sports or dance, which communicate in their own way. All of the manual crafts and skills are also forms of information on the ways an individual worker can contribute something to society. The institutions of society are another expression of information, whether in the structures and processes of governance, the ways to execute economic activities, and all the ways that humans organize and the laws, rules of behaviour and values that underly human interactions. The scope of information for the human species places us at the apex of evolution of life as we know it.
Perhaps the most fundamental level of human information, although often underappreciated today, is that in religious scriptures or traditions, which have provided the principles and values for each major stage in the evolution of human society. Whether in the world’s major religions or in the world-views and conceptions of indigenous peoples, these revolutionary concepts can usually be traced back to unique figures who all claim to have received their message from a greater reality beyond themselves, and to be simple instruments for its transmission, generally at great personal cost. At least in their initial pure form, they have represented a creative force for social and individual progress from families to tribes, city states, nations, and now to a global community, as most recently demonstrated in the Bahá’í Faith.
Information at the individual level
From probably even before we are born, we are acquiring information from contact with our mother, and a baby is already learning through observation and imitation before developing language. Education in the family and community then evolves into formal schooling, as each individual develops the knowledge and skills necessary to function in society and to make a contribution through work and perhaps through other social services or entertainment. There is physical education to maintain good health and to develop the capacities of the body as a tool for service. None of this is permanent, since we all ultimately age, learn detachment from what was previously possible, and eventually die, when all of that individual information, having performed its useful functions, is lost.
The role of information for an individual is different from that collectively for the human species. One potential of the individual is to reproduce, creating new human beings and passing on information to the next generation. Any accounting of information in human terms must capture this dynamic process of information transmission from generation to generation within a community or society, which is critical to its survival and development. Since we each must acknowledge that we cannot live forever, we must decide what information, knowledge and life-long learning to transmit directly to our offspring, and what perhaps should be preserved for society and transmitted in some other form, perhaps as a memoir or archive.
From a spiritual perspective, the transient things of this world such as wealth, power and knowledge, and therefore all material forms of information, count for nothing. On our death, all we take with us is our love for God, and some sense that whatever good we accomplished in this life will somehow be remembered and acknowledged in the after life as we reconnect with other souls in whatever spiritual station we have earned. In a beautiful phrase in The Secret of Divine Civilization, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá describes the primary purpose in revealing the Divine Law as “to bring about happiness in the after life and civilization and the refinement of character in this”. Happiness is obviously spiritual happiness. Civilization is the social contribution we make in developing and using information in all its forms in service for the common good, and these contributions can be part of the information we leave behind that is collectively preserved and transmitted. Refinement of character is cultivating our spiritual qualities and values, that collectively in a society might be considered spiritual capital and a fundamental part of an ever-advancing civilization.
Preservation and transmission of information
One of the remarkable features of the modern age of globalization, starting on 23 May 1844 when the first telegraph message was sent, is the rapid advance of technologies for the capture, preservation and transmission of information in all its forms. In pre-literate indigenous cultures, transmission was oral and by direct teaching of practical skills like hunting, food gathering and tool-making. The spiritual principles, values, history and traditions were maintained by the wise men and women of the tribe and memorized by their chosen successors from generation to generation, with cave art or inscriptions on stone where technically possible. Writing was the first tool for recording information in more permanent form, on clay tablets, stone carvings or copied on parchment, beyond what could be retained in a human memory. The invention of paper and printing was another important step forward where information could reach beyond an educated elite. Other forms of information included painting, sculpture, architecture and crafted objects and tools. The recent explosions in technologies have brought photography and printed images, recorded sound for music and the spoken word, and things like film and video to capture movement integrating all together. With the digital revolution, all this information has been freed from the physical formats previously necessary, enabling their instant replication and communication around the world. The collective accumulation of information is now phenomenal.
However, while we now have personal information technologies and access in ways never possible before, our biological capacity to capture, store and use information has not increased, so we have to learn to be selective and to set priorities. The new technologies present new challenges, between a concentration on entertainment and distraction for personal pleasure to manipulation and cultivating addictions and dependency, not to mention the capture of information as intellectual property to be sold to the highest bidders, excluding all those who cannot afford it, about which I have commented previously in Information: Private Property or Public Good.
We need to rethink how this phenomenal new capacity for information, which increases in value the more it is shared, and where access to knowledge should be a human right, can contribute to an ever-advancing civilization. How do we give everyone access to science, art and beauty, for example? What is worth recording in the history of peoples, the great spiritual traditions, the advance of civilization, the rich diversity of human cultures? What is useful to inspire, educate and transmit? How do we condense, synthesize, preserve and share all that is best for the human race? These are the questions we need to address so information can become one of the tools to prepare a better future for all humankind.

Last updated 16 January 2025
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