Infusing Autopoietic and Cognitive Behaviors into Digital Automata to Improve Their Sentience, Resilience, and Intelligence

All living beings use autopoiesis and cognition to manage their “life” processes from birth through death. Autopoiesis enables them to use the specification in their genomes to instantiate themselves using matter and energy transformations. They reproduce, replicate, and manage their stability. Cognition allows them to process information into knowledge and use it to manage its interactions between various constituent parts within the system and its interaction with the environment. Currently, various attempts are underway to make modern computers mimic the resilience and intelligence of living beings using symbolic and sub-symbolic computing. We discuss here the limitations of classical computer science for implementing autopoietic and cognitive behaviors in digital machines. We propose a new architecture applying the general theory of information (GTI) and pave the path to make digital automata mimic living organisms by exhibiting autopoiesis and cognitive behaviors. The new science, based on GTI, asserts that information is a fundamental constituent of the physical world and that living beings convert information into knowledge using physical structures that use matter and energy. Our proposal uses the tools derived from GTI to provide a common knowledge representation from existing symbolic and sub-symbolic computing structures to implement autopoiesis and cognitive behaviors.

Autopoietic Machines with Structural Information Processing

The General Theory of Information (GTI) tells us that information is represented, processed and communicated using physical structures. The physical universe is made up of structures combining matter and energy. According to GTI, “Information is related to knowledge as energy is related to matter.” GTI also provides tools to deal with transformation of information and knowledge. We present here, the application of these tools for the design of digital autopoietic machines with higher efficiency, resiliency and scalability than the information processing systems based on the Turing machines. We discuss the utilization of these machines for building autopoietic and cognitive applications in a multi-cloud infrastructure.

RELATIONSHIP OF ACCEPTABILITY OF MISLEADING METHODS WITH PERSONAL FEATURES AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR STRATEGIES

The article presents the results of an empirical study of personality traits, strategies of social behavior and the acceptability of information manipulation on a sample of youth, mainly female students (n=195). Based on the theory of communicative implicatures by P. Grice and the theory of information manipulation by S. McCornack, a case test with educational and interpersonal situations of communication was created, aimed at studying the choice of admissibility of information manipulation. Correlation analysis revealed that the acceptability of all four forms of information manipulation (lies, deception, inappropriateness, and obscurity) is most closely related to deficiencies in conscientiousness (lack of productivity, organization, and responsibility) and goodwill (lack of trust and empathy). We can observe the connections with individual personality aspects that are unique for different methods of information manipulation. In addition, information manipulation is associated with destructive social strategies of behavior, especially in the intersubjective sphere and in combination with a tendency to devalue the interlocutor.

Food in the communicative perspective: linguacultural approach

The article makes an attempt to characterise the act of eating as a communicative event and a cultural text: the analysis is based on the model of communication, theory of information and the general theory of signs. The main objective of the analysis is focused on reconstruction of the linguistic and cultural picture of eating in communication. In the description of the data, references are made to selected research methods and tools of linguistic semantics, particularly in its cultural variant. The data under consideration were initially limited to Polish linguaculture but in the course of analysis examples from other cultures were incorporated. While constructing a communicative model of eating, a basic distinction is made between the performer of an action (the eater) and the object of this action (the food). The analysis of the data reveals that apart from the verbally expressed information about who eats, what they eat, and how they do it. Another significant role in coding meaning is played by the accompanying non-verbal communication (eating-related sounds or the eater’s body language), as well as conventional signals replacing verbal formulas (communication through an arrangement of the cutlery, the dish itself or a specific manner of consumption).

Analysis on Quantified Self-Behavior of Customers in Food Consumption under the Perspective of Social Networks

China is still facing the double challenges of over nutrition and malnutrition. One of the main reasons is the lack of residents’ understanding of the nutritional value of food. Quantified self, as a measure of consumer self-activity, has been used to analyze food consumption behavior recently. Although the research results are increasing, the conclusions are not consistent. What’s more, previous literatures did not consider food consumption behavior based on the theory of information perception and the risk perception theory. In addition to obtaining information through their own human capital for quantitative activities, consumers will also obtain information through social networks. In view of the above understanding, this study uses experimental design and field survey to obtain data, uses Heckman two-step method and PLS path modeling method to analyze the impact of consumers’ quantified self-behavior on their health food consumption, and discusses the moderating role of social networks based on the perspective of complex network. The results show that (1) consumers’ health awareness can promote their choice of quantified self-behavior, (2) consumers’ quantified self-behavior is helpful to promote their purchase intention and purchase scale of healthy food, and (3) social networks play a positive moderating role in consumers’ quantified self-influence on their healthy food consumption. Both emotional networks and instrumental networks have significant moderating effect, but the formal is stronger. This article not only considers the relationship between food consumption behavior and social network but also the enhances literature based on the theory of information perception and the risk perception theory.

A Social-Identity Theory of Information-Access Regulation (SITIAR): Understanding the Psychology of Sharing and Withholding

Secrecy, privacy, confidentiality, concealment, disclosure, and gossip all involve sharing and withholding access to information. However, existing theories do not account for the fundamental similarity between these concepts. Accordingly, it is unclear when sharing and withholding access to information will have positive or negative effects and why these effects might occur. We argue that these problems can be addressed by conceptualizing these phenomena more broadly as different kinds of information-access regulation. Furthermore, we outline a social-identity theory of information-access regulation (SITIAR) that proposes that information-access regulation shapes shared social identity, explaining why people who have access to information feel a sense of togetherness with others who have the same access and a sense of separation from those who do not. This theoretical framework unifies diverse findings across disparate lines of research and generates a number of novel predictions about how information-access regulation affects individuals and groups.

Collateral Booms and Information Depletion

We develop a new theory of information production during credit booms. Entrepreneurs need credit to undertake investment projects, some of which enable them to divert resources. Lenders can protect themselves from such diversion in two ways: collateralization and costly screening, which generates durable information about projects. In equilibrium, the collateralization-screening mix depends on the value of aggregate collateral. High collateral values make it possible to reallocate resources towards productive projects, but they also crowd out screening. This has important dynamic implications. During credit booms driven by high collateral values (e.g. real estate booms), economic activity expands but the economy’s stock of information on existing projects gets depleted. As a result, collateral-driven booms end in deep crises and slow recoveries: when booms end, investment is constrained both by the lack of collateral and by the lack of information on existing projects, which takes time to rebuild. We provide empirical support for the mechanism using US firm-level data.

From critical information literacy to a critical theory of information

In addition to proposing a reflective and revisionist analysis of information literacy conventions and institutional norms, critical information literacy studies assume a practical commitment to engage in the struggle against the power structures that support the dominant production and dissemination of information, creating obstacles to autonomy and social emancipation. This commitment is based on Paulo Freire's pedagogical perspective of praxis, which has in its (often overlooked) roots the critical fortune of Marxist historical materialism – which, in turn, also underpins the critical theory of the Frankfurt School philosophers. With this epistemological recognition in mind, this article presents a proposal for a critical theory of information conceived from a mediation between critical information literacy studies, critical pedagogy and critical theory, in an attempt to strengthen the theoretical-methodological perspective that guides the pedagogical praxis of such studies in the field of Library and Information Science.