Morphology of ``Information Flow''

Abstract

Such phrases as “information flow” may be purely metaphorical, or may refer to porterage and storage of physical documents, transmission of signals, power required for signaling, Shannon's Selective Information, changes in the state of one's personal knowledge, propagation of announcements concerning messages, social increase of awareness, propagation of or reaction to imperatives, and so on. These matters are distinct and must be distinguished. Then conditions must be stated under which one can validly speak of and measure the appropriate flow. In this paper it is shown that within the field of Notification (mention and delivery of recorded messages to users) there are twenty basic activities formed by choosing triads from the six variables, Message, Code, Channel, Source, Destination, and Designation. “Flow” has meaning only when two such triads have two variables in common, forming a tetrad. Then flow or correspondence between any pair of variables is inextricable from a conjugate flow or correspondence between the other pair. Between any pair of endpoints there are six possible distinct types of flow, according to which two of the remaining four variables are directly used to achieve the flow.