Information wants to be free...?

I both like and dislike the quote "information wants to be free", mainly because it opens up a very nice philosophical discussion on what 'free' means but also because - and this is part I hate - it is some damned meaningless without any grounding in any form of semantics; and we've seen this before!

For the first part, this statement treats information in an anthropomorphic manner. Is it really information itself that has the need to be free? Let's assume that it does, though in a very fairy tale like way, it seems to me.

So let's then look at the word 'free', which I assume does not mean 'free' as in 'without cost' in the sense that someone has to pay for it. Though this is a curious idea in that information is somehow prostituting itself and despite all attempts someone (the information's pimp perhaps?) insists on controlling things. I guess this is the idea that information is going through some pre-1960's sexual revolution...

Rather I think the word 'free' refers to 'freedom' albeit in a Western sense of the word. Think of the use of the concept freedom as used in the US Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all information is created equal, that it is endowed by its Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

...or should that be Existence, Communication and Semantics perhaps....?

Let's stick with the word 'freedom' and its naive or common-sense meaning. What does it mean to be free? We can turn further to the the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights for further clarification, though here I'm sure we go into more of a legal-political debate more than anything. Evidently freedom means either the right to do or be something or the right to be protected from something.

So the question is, if information want to be free:

• What does information want the freedom to do/be?
• What does information want the freedom from?

Under the first question, the freedom to be 'free' as in 'without cost' certainly falls. What about the freedom to be private, or the freedom not to be abused - as in excessive privacy violations? Do we further need a notion of agency - does information have an owner or provenance?

Without answering those - I don't think I can give a definitive answer anyway - here's another thought. Given that matter = energy, isn't the use of the term information quite literally another way of saying 'humans' (or 'men' as in the Declaration of Independence). In which case the question 'information wants to be free' is just an expression of man's desire to define what freedom is - ostensibly in terms of freedom to do/be and freedom from.

And here comes the practical part, which freedoms to do/be or from do we allow or deny in order to be "free"?

Grothendieck Biography

Mathematics is full of "characters", Grigori Perelman, Pierre de Fermat, Évariste Galois, Paul Erdős, Andrew Wiles** to name just a few and each having their own, unique, wondrous story about their dedication to their mathematical work and life.

Perhaps none more so than Alexander Grothendieck exemplifies the mathematician and since 1991 lived as a recluse in Andorra. However since the body of work and his contribution to mathematics, particularly, category theory and topology has been almost legendary he retains a great mystery about him.

In order to understand Groethendieck and possibly the mind of the mathematician a series of biographies of Groethendieck are being written by Leila Schneps. The current draft and extracts can be found on her pages about this work.

I'll quote a paragraph from Chapter 1 of Volume II, that gives a flavour of Groethendieck's work and approach to mathematics:

Taken altogether, Grothendieck’s body of work is perceived as an immense tour de force, an accomplishment of gigantic scope, and also extremely difficult both as research and for the reader, due to the effort necessary to come to a familiar understanding of the highly abstract objects or points of view that he systematically adopts as generalizations of the classical ones. All agree that the thousands of pages of his writings and those of his school, and the dozens and hundreds of new results and new proofs of old results stand as a testimony to the formidable nature of the task.

This is truly a work at a scale a magnitude more detailed than, say Simon Singh's fascinating documentation about Wiles' work and proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Suffice to say, I look forward to reading it. Maybe Simon Singh should make a documentary about Groethendieck?

** I credit Andrew Wiles with inspiring me to study for my PhD back in 1995

Teletubbies creator attacks firms

Interesting comment printed in The Guardian about parential anxieties, should make some interesting discussion. Some selected quotes:

Teletubbies creator attacks firms
Press Association, Sunday October 2 2011

Teletubbies creator Anne Wood has criticised firms that profit from parents' "anxieties" about how to bring up their children

...[article snipped]...


She said: "There is an awful lot of anxiety being generated which I think is a terrible thing. What I was talking about was just enjoying innocent fun really, having a sing and playing round and round the garden."

She also criticised the Baby Einstein range of educational children's toys, saying: "The idea that there is only one way for a child to be intellectually developed is anathema to me so I hate that and I think that it is again making money out of people's anxieties, which is a shame."

Artificial Life...

"First artifical life?", here's the news from J Craig Venter Laboratories:

FIRST SELF-REPLICATING SYNTHETIC BACTERIAL CELL

...
Now, this scientific team headed by Drs. Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith and Clyde Hutchison have achieved the final step in their quest to create the first synthetic bacterial cell. In a publication in Science magazine, Daniel Gibson, Ph.D. and a team of 23 additional researchers outline the steps to synthesize a 1.08 million base pair Mycoplasma mycoides genome, constructed from four bottles of chemicals that make up DNA. This synthetic genome has been "booted up" in a cell to create the first cell controlled completely by a synthetic genome.
...

NB: Above summary truncated for space reasons (see original)

And the news from the BBC:

'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
By Victoria Gill, Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

and the reference in Science:

Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome

20 May 2010 DOI: 10.1126/science.1190719

Daniel G. Gibson, John I. Glass, Carole Lartigue, Vladimir N. Noskov, Ray-Yuan Chuang, Mikkel A. Algire, Gwynedd A. Benders, Michael G. Montague, Li Ma, Monzia M. Moodie, Chuck Merryman, Sanjay Vashee, Radha Krishnakumar, Nacyra Assad- Garcia, Cynthia Andrews-Pfannkoch, Evgeniya A. Denisova, Lei Young, Zhi-Qing Qi, Thomas H. Segall-Shapiro, Christopher H. Calvey, Prashanth P. Parmar, Clyde A. Hutchison III, Hamilton O. Smith, J. Craig Venter

BBC World Service radio has a very good interview with Dr.Venter (Wikipedia entry here). Unfortunately this hasn't really stopped the accompanying hysteria. BBC World Service's Newshour ( 14h05, 21 May 2010 UK Time: link - which may work in the future ) has a superb interview with Prof Steve Jones, Dept. of Generics, UCL which discusses what has actually happened in clear, precise, scientific terms in a way that is readily understandable to the general public.

However, for most media outlets, Newsbiscuit has a rather more accurate take on the reporting of this and regrettably anything related to science usually:

Journalists create world’s first artificial news story


Journalists in the UK have succeeded in creating the world’s first synthetic news story about artificial DNA.The hacks developed the outline of a normal piece of reporting about a tentative, abstruse scientific discovery, and transplanted into it some organic tripe about an unprecedented scientific breakthrough which will change the world and possibly wipe out all human life

Frighteningly Newsbiscuit's report probably has more accurate, scientific comment than most mainstream media.