Information: The Algorithmic Paradigm

  • Authors:
  • Cristian S. Calude

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand

  • Venue:
  • Formal Theories of Information
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Information has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to a variety of technical settings. There is no single theory of information, but several theories, Shannon's information theory [16, 27, 28], semantic theories [2], logic of information [18], information algebra [21], philosophy of information [19], information flow [3], quantum information theory [24], evolutionary information [30], algorithmic information theory [4, 15], to name just a few. Each theory focuses on some specific aspects of information, and overlaps are minimal. Information is context-sensitive and heavily dependent on the adopted coding. In this paper we will present, through a sequence of examples, some ideas and results of the algorithmic approach to information. In this approach information is measured by counting bits encoding computations.