long replay
about informatics, long
Thanks @abs for your feedback. They are really welcome.
Yes we talked about this stuffs before when I published http://www.tesio.it/2018/10/11/math-science-and-technology.html
For sure my definition is different from the one used by "in practice". At least if by "in practice" you mean by market and whatever it influences.
The point is, you are right about this, if these definitions are useful (thus meaningful) or not.
As far as I can see, you don't have any objections about the definitions of Information and Data so I take them for good.
As for Informatics I don't think that it is too broad: it's just general and abstracted from the hardware.
IMO, it's false that any research topics is about information. It's true that any research project produces information, but the topic of the research and thus the topic of the information produced itself is not information or the techniques to use it.
The only fields whose topic is information are actually Mathematics and Informatics. But since Informatics use all the conceptual tools of Math but not the other way around, Math is a subset of Informatics.
Same for poetry, film and dance: they produce information but most of times they are not about information so they are not, by themselves, covered by the definition I gave.
Why programming and not journalism?
For a very short time in my life (roughly 2 months) I've been a journalist. After being censored for the 4th time I quit the job (which was not well payed anyway).
My mentor used to say that a good journalist need just three things: a paper, a pencil and a good dose of skepticism.
The practice of journalism however is not as free as the practice of programming. I've never wrote anything subversive for the newspaper I was working for. But the censorship were done to not offend or contradict any potential advertisers.
That's why I don't think a world of journalists would be much better than the present.
On the other hand a world of hackers would be much much better.
In any case, all the text about the programs execution from the computers that "play" them was to explain why programming is fundamental to understand what informatics is.
Indeed if Informatics is just about Information, programming is the best way to understand it as there is not necessarily another discipline implied.
Also journalists (for example) won't have much control about how the readers will use the news he write.
OTOH, programmers have a very fine grained control over what they can or cannot do.
Moreover, software is played by hardware that strictly follows our instructions.
So it's REALLY like if we were able to summon daemons and control them.
Yet (again just like Math), the fact that Informatics pertain a fundamental building block of humans' interactions (the Information) make it broadly applicable (by humans).
So an advantage of my definition of Informatics with respect to your "the subfield of mathematics that is concerned with computation" is that my definition includes all practical matters that do not fit a mathematical definition. Compilers, for example, transform data (and thus informations) to another data bundle that can be executed.
So are operating systems and so on.
The goal of the article is not to pose like I had the keys to the world formula.
I just want people understand how important is to learn programming and debugging.
Computers are simple machines and they are surely simpler than "the interplay that goes into forming reality", but software debugging is a product of such interplay too!
And it's really something that requires a deep understanding of the work and goals of people spread across the continents!
The article is also very Political: it's a call to action with the hope to change how developers code programs.
Now I really need to go to sleep... see you soon!
re: about informatics, long
re: about informatics, long
Well, probably the main difference between journalism and programming is that confusing the reader is not an option for programmers.
At least, there is an interpreter that (sooner or later) is VERY picky and logical. Also the same interpreter turns your text into physical effects, which means that programmers power is more "efficient", in a way (at least for some goals), but also more harmful, as you say.
For sure (at least in my vision) #Informatics cover #Linguistics too: I used Math to explain how wide is its reach, but I didn't intend to artificially restrict it.
I don't agree that social sciences belong to Informatics because their interest matter are communities, not Information.
However you are right that there are some important interactions between the two, much like between #Physics and #Mathematics.
As for poetry and dance your objection is deeper than I thought. Thanks for it! 😄
Actually I studied Poetry for a while when I was young. And I'm a self-taught pianist.
There are actually parts, like metrics and rhytm, that are fully included in the definition of Informatics.
But again I'd say that #Poetry, #Music and #Dance USE (an intuitive form of) Informatics but cannot be included into such field.
The fundamental value of Poetry (and Music and Dance) is Beauty, not Curiosity.
Yet I have to admit that Poets use their intuitive insight of Informatics to try to convey exactly those insights that I think cannot be transferred (and thus I do not include in the definition of Information).
The problem is that Poetry doesn't really convey the Idea, but make it resound inside those who already have it.
I can't transfer to you my feeling of God, for example. But if you feel God in the same way, you might recognise a piece of poetry about it.
Same for other experience like Love, Fear and so on. You can't convey the desire for, say, the woman/man/whatever you love to a kid whose mind have never felt the effects of hormones.
There is not really an information transfer (lossless or not): by listening music people rediscover insight they already have through the specific channel that the specific art provides.
So I still think that Poetry, Music, Dance and #Art in general USE and to some extend SPECIALIZE Informatics for their needs, but are not part of Informatics.
And obviously, you CAN mix the specifics of an Art with an actual transfer of Information, eg by writing a poem about an abuse you don't just reproduce your feelings in the reader but transfer actual information through it.
This doesn't falsify my definition though, it just means that Art can use Informatics. Which is actually quite evident in real world with Arduino, for example.
As for the "attitude" your objection is very interesting.
The point of my article is not that Informatics will save the world, but that like it or not, it will change it very deeply. So much that it could actually produce an evolutive fork of our specie.
The point is: if Informatics is so general so powerful and so political, CAN people ignore it?
Right now there is an ongoing World Cybernetic War, and yet most people can't see it for most of time (except when some equivalent of an atomic detonation occurs).
It's a Democratic approach opposed to the Totalitarian approaches of China and USA.
Do you think it's a worthless fight? Or that we have an alternative to preserve our Democracy? If so which one?
Do you think there something I can do to clarify this message more?
None of the above are rhetorical questions: if there are alternatives I missed, do not assume I discarded them... I didn't saw any!
re: about informatics, long
re: about informatics, long
Poetry is about Beauty.
A poet that discuss how to use metric to convey a feeling is not doing poetry, but Informatics.
But if that is all he does, he is not a poet at all.
On the other hand a poet might never discuss these technicalities and write great poetry (think about Emily Dickinson).
That's why Poetry can use Informatics (as it use Linguistics) but is not "about" it.
As for the Political aspect, I think something went loss in translation.
Computers are totally secondary to Informatics. They are literally like telescopes for Astronomy. Or abacus for Mathematics. Or paper for Poetry.
#Computers are just mirrors for our minds.
Learning to program (not just to code) and debug (not just to program) is a way to learn Rationality and Critical Thinking (and actually also a lot of humility, once you realize how many errors you do).
Rationality and Critical Thinking are tools. They are not enough to save the world but if they are not available to everyone, but only to few people, the world will become worse and worse.
That's why I think we need to teach them everybody, just like reading and writing.
Because if we don't turn them to well known creativity tools, if we don't turn them to tools of #freedom, they will become (stay) tools of #Power.
As I want people to be free, I want to give them these powerful tool we have.
@Shamar @thegibson @enkiv2 @aral @natecull @bob @abs
'Informatics' seems to be a more common term in europe, & the american equivalent is probably not "computer science" but either "information science" or "IT". "Information science" is an interesting term, since it overlaps with "library science" & that's a useful lens: tech & practices aimed at making the human fund of knowledge available to humanity.