"But what I really need is a nice, simple quotation explaining that information is a pattern. Or something like that.
Maybe one of you could write such an explanation."
Knowing it won't be helpful, but trying anyway,
Simon
I am writing a paper---heave been for several years---arguing for various reasons that computer programs are not patentable and should not be.
One problem is that according to the Patent Act, processes are expressly patentable. On the other hand, it has always been understood that mental processes are not patentable. (The patentable processes are the ones that make some material change like curing rubber.)
Now all that computers process is information---and all they do is process information---in accordance with algorithms that can also, in theory, be implemented by human beings using only head and hand (i.e., brains and paper and pencils). And the information that they process takes the form of a string or stream of binary digits that we can, perhaps, interpret as being meaningful, although computers can't, having no ability as of yet to deal with meanings.
Now I think that it should be pretty clear that the processing of information is the equivalent of a mental process and that for all practical purposes it is a mental process. (I used to know the algorithm for finding square roots using paper and pencil, now I know the algrorithm for finding them by using a computer.) Back in the good old days, "computer" was a job description, so even then, if you had a computer working for you you did not have to compute things yourself.
I've hit a strange problem though; I can't find any easily understood---or, at least, easily quotable---definition of "information" in the sense that computers process it. It isn't matter or energy, but cannot exist separately from them. It's a pattern. It is not meaning, but only information can be meaningful. If you accept a mind/body duality, then information is going to end up on the mind side of things---or at least I think it is.
I am familiar with Shannon's communication theory and I may even understand a little of it. And I will happily cite him. But what I really need is a nice, simple quotation explaining that information is a pattern. Or something like that.
Maybe one of you could write such an explanation.
-- Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH EMAIL: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx URL: http://samsara.law.cwru.edu NOTE: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx will soon cease to exist ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
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