In the paper 'Methodological Individualism and Social Knowledge' by Kenneth.J.Arrow the writer discusses, among other things, the concept of social knowledge and the individualist approach to the process of information transfer. In the paper while discussing the implausibility of, a price system being central to the process of information transfer and driving the point, that a majority of the quality information is transparent, the writer proposes that it will be easier to think of information breeding information and suppressing the role of individuals. The writer quotes a late 19th century essayist Samuel Butler " A chicken is an egg's way of making an egg." Information can be perceived as separate entity by itself, which uses humans as mediators to spawn more information. For example, the invention of the wheel can be seen as one set of information breeding another set of information, the knowledge that a tree can be used to obtain wood which can subsequently be made in to a wheel. In this process the mediators i.e. the humans, gain form numerous and varied applications of the new information that is bred. All development of human kind is a result of this transfer and generation of new information.
This notion of information transfer helps us to understand why in almost all of the science fiction depictions of the post apocalypse world, after the machines take over the human race; that the surviving human population live penury and in the presence of obsolete and outdated technology. When the machines take over the human race, they replace the humans as the mediators in the process if information breeding. Thus all the advantages of the applications of new information that is generated accrues to the machines. It is due to the position as the mediators of information that the machines witness phenomenal development and thus live in affluence.
This notion of information transfer helps us to understand why in almost all of the science fiction depictions of the post apocalypse world, after the machines take over the human race; that the surviving human population live penury and in the presence of obsolete and outdated technology. When the machines take over the human race, they replace the humans as the mediators in the process if information breeding. Thus all the advantages of the applications of new information that is generated accrues to the machines. It is due to the position as the mediators of information that the machines witness phenomenal development and thus live in affluence.
