Meaning, Information, and Enclosure

This chapter argues that information is a species of meaning that has been radically enclosed, such that the values in question seem to have become radically portable. They are not so much independent of context, as dependent on contexts which have been engineered so as to be relatively ubiquitous, and hence ostensibly and erroneously ‘context-free’; not so much able to accommodate all contents, as able to assimilate all contents to their contours, and hence ostensibly and erroneously ‘open content’. To make this argument, the chapter highlights the ideas of Donald MacKay in relation to those of Claude Shannon, and it foregrounds the semiotic framework of Charles Sanders Peirce in relation to cybernetics and computer science. It offers two alternative definitions of information. The first focuses on interaction, while the second focuses on institutions, and both effectively mediate between relatively quantitative theories of information and relatively qualitative theories of meaning.