Right at this moment, right in front of you there is an information system: your computer. Among the other things that it does, it stores, files and retrieves information. Of course your computer does a lot of different tasks with information and these are just a few of the basics.
Right now, right in front of your computer, there is a living human being looking at a computer screen. This being has a name. It’s YOUR name. You are that living being. And, you are an information system. You gather, store, file and retrieve information. You pass information along to other information systems. You are a system unto yourself, but chances are you participate in at least one (maybe many) larger cultural information system(s). Of course, there’s a lot more that you do with your life and being an information system is just one of the basic things.
Chromosomes, genes, DNA and all of those complicated basic materials of life are basically encoded information carried by physical media. Your genetic material “explains” what your body is made of in such a way that the “you” that is made from this information can be repaired throughout your life when your cells need to be replaced and can be reconstructed into an entirely new information carrier when you reproduce. None of that could happen without your being an information-carrier.
Information is a very important thing. Every living thing is—in a way and among other thing—a system for carrying and using information. I could do a very long and very far-reaching riff on that subject, but I’ll try to stay focused on the task at hand.
Every information system that we see in the world today is the latest, newest, most-improved version representing the current state of the art of information processing. The Internet was built on the foundation of computer technology and telephone technology. Computerized information is built on the basis of a method of encoding information as binary bits, ones and zeroes, ons and offs, “gates” that are open or closed. Telephone communications-systems were built from another pairing of older technologies—sound reproduction and the telegraph system. For those who don’t remember, telegraphs were the first type of speedy electronic communication and the information was encoded as a series of “dots and dashes” or long and short pulses of electrically-produced sound: the Morse Code, which in turn represented letters in the alphabet of a language. These things are all codes built from other codes; multiple layers of encoding that enable information-senders to send complex information further than before, but still with the basic goal of transferring information from one mind (or system) to another.
The medium is in the service of the information. Information is message; medium is method. The medium is just the vehicle that moves the message from place to place, hopefully equal to the task, hopefully not spoiling the message during transfer.
DNA isn’t so different and the similarities are no real surprise. Living beings whose complex genetic information is encoded by series of combinations of relatively simple nucleotides developed communications systems that create complex messages by an encoding that is constructed from very simple parts. The basic bits used to carry information are not complicated, but the complex system of encoding enables these simple bits to carry very complex messages.
We could spend the rest of our natural lives pointing the selective “lens of our attention” at various specific bits of information or at all the glorious variety of applications in the field of information technology. What I hope to do in this article is a reverse zoom away from the specifics so we can see information systems in a more broad, general way and ask ourselves some basic questions about information and the systems that work with information as-a-whole. I don’t want to give you any “final word” as to what information systems are really all about, but I think you’ll enjoy asking the questions and finding the answers for yourself.
That’s what your brain is for. I am not—nor have I ever been—here to tell you what to think, but I believe that most of us could benefit by continually developing our abilities to think more productively. I won’t tell you what to think, but you and I might help one another better learn how to think. Today, I’d like to steer us toward thinking about information and the systems that work with information, knowing that Life is such a system: messages traveling through media.
And so is art. My own favorite art-form is music. Most people like music. I’m not sure how I could relate to a person who doesn’t like music. I’m not sure that would even make sense to me. Even deaf people can enjoy music. You just have to turn it up real loud so they can feel the rhythmic vibrations. That’s why I’m a drummer: I love the vibrations.
Taste in music varies widely: what some people like, some other people can’t stand. And there, my friends, is the perfect starting-point for my discussion of general guidelines for the exchange of information. You could have the best and truest information in the history of the world, but if you can’t find another system that is willing and able to input that information, you won’t be able to make an information transfer. You can’t talk effectively without a listener; it does no good to write if there’s no reader; solo sex is masturbation. Even the best, most powerful radio station is worthless if no one has a radio that receives its signal or if no one is interested in what your station plays.
Information that can’t go anywhere is dead information. Music that no one likes doesn’t get to be art; only noise.
Like many people who are familiar with pop-music culture, I can barely stand to think of Michael Jackson as a likable entertainer any more. He’s weird. He may have molested children. He uses his money to insulate himself from reality. He moved out of the U.S. (IMHO and subject to my own prejudices, the best country in the world) to live in Dubai. He did bizarre things to his face that make him look completely unlike the person he should naturally be—an African American man—and more like what he should not be—an ungracefully-aged white woman.
Sorry if I’m being too mean. Michael Jackson is a member of my generation. He’s about one year older than I am. I’ve never had any plastic surgery. I have not pampered the skin of my face. My nose has been broken (BADLY!!) but still, at the current moment and with all due modesty, I can say unreservedly that I look better than Michael Jackson does. Especially naked. Not that I’ve ever seen him naked, but I’ve seen ME and I can’t imagine that Michael looks as good as I do.
In short, when I looked for a piece of music to use to demonstrate music-as-an-information-system, I did not choose music that I thought everyone could instantly and unprejudicially “like”. I chose a bit of music that I think displays a good usage of information-sense and one that might be a bit of a challenge for a modern person to like, so that a lesson could be taught: can you enjoy music that Michael Jackson made years ago, knowing who he is now? Or does who he is now forever spoil all the value of all the music he ever made? Does one bad apple retroactively spoil the whole bunch? Does one “wrong” word ruin an entire message? Is any information really perfect, or do we often have to look at information where there is useful content surrounded by un-useful content, knowing how to take what we can use and leave the rest behind?
It would be a rare thing indeed for any lengthy piece of information to be flawless and perfect at all points; perhaps beyond rare—perhaps no such long piece of information exists at all. Maybe there is no such thing as “perfectly true” information. But there IS such a thing as useful information, some of which exists side-by-side with less-useful information. You are your own system. You must decide—bit-by-bit—what you can use and what you cannot. But it is doubtful that you could ever completely “take yourself off the information grid” and not use any information at all. Life is made of information. You’re a life. Let’s be reasonable about this. Here, have a look at this fun video. Smile if you can.
This clip, framed in this blog by some of my own writing, is a song by the Jackson Five, framed with some comedy by Bill Cosby and Tommy Smothers as part of a television special made by Motown featuring the Jacksons and called “Goin’ Back to Indiana”. It aired in 1971 when I was 11 or 12 years old, so Michael must have been 12 or 13 at the time. Could you have been as professional an entertainer as he was at 12 years of age?
This clip was posted on You Tube by a user called babyB5. Thanks baby!
The song begins with the sound of an electric guitar played as a percussion instrument, backed by some orchestral strings and a bass-line with piano and an invisible horn section. That sets the harmonic and rhythmic structure of the piece. In information terms, the intro creates the framework in which the rest of the information will be delivered. The rhythm guitar conveys that this is an early 1970’s dance tune. A second guitar comes in, playing a chord-pattern to outline the harmonic/melodic structure of the piece. Within a few seconds, the intro to the song builds a rather complex foundation for itself.
My writing is the most tedious part of this entry. If you already like the song, you don’t need my words to tell you why you like it. If you don’t like the song, there’s little I could say to get you to like it.
Your personal “like/don’t like” line makes the difference in whether any song is music or noise.
TO YOU: the user.
Art/schmart! If you don’t like it, you don’t like it and that’s that.
But know this: the more things you choose to instantly dislike, the fewer your opportunities to acquire new information. You are an agent with relatively free will. You can shut MOST information out if you choose to. Or, conversely, you can take in a bunch of information you don’t need and overtax your own system.
The line is always YOURS to draw.
After a couple of verses sung by the Jackson brothers with Michael singing lead, they drop the strings out of the arrangement, breaking the song back down to its simplest elements: the voices of the five Jackson brothers, plus bass and guitar. This is now a standard device in dance music: the “breakdown” or just “break”. In this clip, it happens at 3:08 on the time-counter.
The break sort of cools things off and lets you know that you can relax. It’s okay. It’s just some “ordinary guys” singing. There are no tricks here. They didn’t use sampling back then, or ProTools or loops or any of the fancy stuff that you find in a professional recording studio nowadays. But people knew that record producers “sweetened” pop music with effects and orchestras. The average music listener had a pretty fair notion that a good producer could make just about any voice sound really cool. The Jacksons had the good sense to include a break so that their fans could hear that it was just them singing and no fancy tricks to make them sound better.
At 3:20, Michael comes back in.
At 3:25, Little Michael Jackson does that amazing thing he does: turns a passionate scream into music, creating a gorgeous vocal note out of unbridled emotion.
I like it.
Through all the multiple layers of media, the message is delivered: you are all that Little Michael Jackson wants, all he needs. What he wants and needs of you is that you dance. And buy his records.
Nothing that the older version of Michael Jackson has done detracts in the slightest from my enjoyment of this song. Such is the power of really well-presented information. I can enjoy this song without ever thinking about getting a nose job; without ever thinking about getting Macaulay Culkin buzzed on Jesus-juice; without retreating from the world to live in Neverland.
However, I am aware that the Michael Jackson that exists today has done some things with the money that his music has earned that I would rather that he had not done and so I will make the personal choice of not giving him any more money. I will enjoy the music of the past-Michael where I can find it for free. You can enjoy this music on this blog page without sending any money anywhere that you don’t want your money to go. Money is another sort of information/media combination that we all want to keep under our own supervision.
In more concise terminology, what I’m pointing out is that it has taken quite a long, complex chain of media transfers for you to hear this music in this blog. The media has taken a circuitous and convoluted path, but the message is still there.
In case you were wondering, yes they were “lip synching”—pretending to sing in front of the cameras for this video, but the music that you hear in the video was actually recorded in a studio and is the version of the song that went on the record they sold. In other live versions of this song, Michael doesn’t hit the scream nearly as well (see the Jackson Five on the Ed Sullivan Show
).
Enjoying music—maybe USING information in general—seems to be less of a personal risk than making music. Reading is less risky than writing. Being an art-lover is not as dangerous as being an artist. Being a producer of information is quite a lot more difficult and dangerous than being a user of information.
And here I still am—still trying despite the risks.
What do I want and need of you? Why am I writing this and trying to get you to read it? I want and need for you to use your mind when you look at information, to make intelligent choices about how you use information, to try to understand what it’s for and why it has come to you. I want and need to be a good information system belonging to a larger community of information systems. The efficacy of the system of which I am a part directly affects my own efficacy as an information system unto myself. I see you and I as in this together. You, on the other hand, can choose to include me in your cultural information system or not.
You could be wondering by now what it is about a Jackson Five song that I find to be a good device for saying something about information in general. As well you should, my curious friend.
Art is—in general—a type of information-sharing. The information that you keep inside your head and don’t share with anyone is different from the type of information that you can share with others. Your private, “secret” information—the stuff that you don’t tell—doesn’t need a sharable format. If you don’t plan to share it, you don’t need to have a way to share it.
But transferable information does have to have a way that it can be shared. This type of information—which includes all art, all language, all communication of all kinds and all living genetic material—must be formatted in such a way that it can be transferred from one “information container” to another. In this way, each of us—information containers unto ourselves—can take part in a larger information system: a society or a culture.
The Jackson Five were part of a musical culture, in particular a dance music culture. They could send their information (their songs) into their culture by using a series of culturally-established media formatted in such a way as to get the information where they wanted it to go. One of those was the medium of a dance-beat, used as a carrier for the information of the song, recorded onto tape (another medium), released into a marketplace (medium 3) and supported by radio air-play (yet another medium) where it could connect with its intended recipient: people who like dance music.
When you approach any sort of information, it can be enlightening to think about it through this kind of thought-train, asking yourself what it is founded upon, what its basis is, how it got to you, what purpose it might serve and so on. This approach might seem overly-complicated, but if you make a habit of it, most of the time you can work your way through some very complex interactions of message and media in just a few moments and make information much more usable for yourself. This can be a very productive method for looking at information that you don’t immediately understand. The first questions are always “what purpose is this information serving in my life?” and “is this information complete or has it been compromised by its medium?”
You’ll have your own feelings about dance music, but I have to tell you one thing about it before I let go of your attention: dance music of any type is not complete unto itself. If you don’t dance to it, the message is utterly lost. It’s there to move your body and it doesn’t really become music until your body moves with it.
This song by the Jackson Five is part of the historical foundations of the dance music you hear today. I can tell you what it is and where it comes from, but liking or not liking is your own choice.
If that tape counter had been allowed to continue running, the number would have gotten to about 17,870,400 or so before the next major thing happened to the song “I Want You Back”. That’s the number of minutes in 34 years; the time between the Jackson’s TV special and this clip of K T Tunstall performing the same song. Here’s your challenge: find anything about the first version of the song that you wish to dislike–the studio trickery of mass-market music, the very presence of the “king of pop”, the song being too old–dislike anything you want to dislike–and see if this doesn’t charm you:
Ms. Tunstall has some major talent on many levels. She uses some electronics to create and replay loops of her own playing, setting the whole song up live as she’s performing–she’s her own band. Then there’s the courage to even attempt that. Her voice–like the rest of her presentation–is completely honest. But above all the rest of the talent she showed here, she took a song that some people might have a hard time liking and she HEALED the music; she took it out of a disagreeable context and brought it into her own context where it could be appreciated as a nice song. Thank you K T!
It has taken me over a year of blogging to develop enough confidence to tell you that I feel that I have a right (and a responsibility to go with it) to write about anything whatsoever that I should want to write about. This is it. LOL! This is what I actually WANT to write about! On purpose! With or without anyone’s approval! But I do write to be read.
Sure, I try to put information in my writing, but I also try to keep entertainment in it. Those two components work together in a mutually-supporting, synergistic way. I try not to let either over-balance the other. If it was all dry information, you probably wouldn’t read it and if it was all mindless entertainment, you might read it and enjoy it, but it wouldn’t mean anything. I write infotainment because that’s how I choose to package my message in a medium.
What I honestly, really want is to say something useful about communication—about the movement of information, how important it is to our world, to our lives as living beings with information (in the bigger sense) as a major part of who we are.
The thing that I want to say is that it takes an aware mind to properly control the flow of information in and out of the system it is in charge of.
You are in charge of your life. You control what you take in, what you keep, what you use, what you modify and build-upon, what you throw away and what you pass along—mostly just according to the whims of what you like. Some people have more erudite ways to explain it, but most people make decisions about what “information” they will and won’t view or accept based purely on what they do or don’t like. The right amount of disliking can be good for you, but too much disliking can keep you away from information that could be valuable to you. The right amount of liking can open the world for you and too much can expose you to unnecessary danger. You are the awareness that controls the balance in your own life. Be in charge of yourself and live well.
See? I could cuss like a truck-driver if I wanted and needed to. I can say anything I want to say and the only time I really have to use “bad” words is when I write a piece about bad words.
In truth, there are no bad words. Words only become bad when they’re used with bad intent. The words are media. The message is the intent.
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