A finite set of instructions for how to complete a task. A step by step process to handle data, calculation, or logical reasoning.

Philosopher Jacques Derrida observes that the Ancient Greek root of the word archive is arkhe, meaning commandment, to commence, and control. He observes that there is no political power without possession of the archive.

Stephen Wilson, in his book Information Arts outlines some definitions of art (and some problems with these definitions). He quotes the Getty Museum:

Art-making may be described as the process of responding to observations, ideas, feelings, and other experiences by creating works of art through skillfull, thoughtful, and imaginative application of tools and techniques to various media. The artistic objects that result are the products of encounters between artists and their intentions, their concepts and attitudes, their cultural and social circumstances, and the materials or media in which they choose to work.

In "Principles of Research," Albert Einstein stated that the artist and the scientist each substitute a self-created world for the experiential one, with a goal of transcendence. In the "Contribution of the Artist to Scientific Visualization," Vibeke Sorenson describes artists as "organizers of large amounts of data"; "people who find unusual relationships between events and images"; and "creative interdisciplinarians."

From Wikipedia:

Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, curate, manage, and process data within a tolerable elapsed time.[13] Big data "size" is a constantly moving target, as of 2012 ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data. Big data is a set of techniques and technologies that require new forms of integration to uncover large hidden values from large datasets that are diverse, complex, and of a massive scale.[14]

A logical analysis of mathematical statements that evaluate to true or false. Developed by George Boole in the mid 19th-century.

- commonly refers to network-based services, which appear to be provided by real server hardware, and are in fact served up by virtual hardware
- in common usage, the term "the cloud" is essentially a metaphor for the Internet
- Marketers have further popularized the phrase "in the cloud" to refer to software, platforms and infrastructure that are sold "as a service", i.e. remotely through the Internet. (from Wikipedia on Cloud Computing)

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Karl Marx, in his critique of capitalism, uses this term to make sense of the "magical quality" commodities procure once they are divorced from their connection to the labor and the labor relations that produced them. See Marx on Commodity Fetishism. Relevant here when we consider if and how information and big data have become fetishized....

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Term coined by Norbert Weiner in 1940 to cover the "entire field of communication and control."

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A piece of information. From latin datum meaning "something given." Used for statistic analysis. Wikipedia: "the quantities, characters, or symbols on which operations are performed by a computer, being stored and transmitted in the form of electrical signals and recorded on magnetic, optical, or mechanical recording media."

Wikipedia: "a structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways."

Writer and Professor Wendy Hui Kyong Chun coins the term dataveillance and defines it as the surveillance through data analysis. As opposed to the panoptic paradigm (see below), computer networks "time shift" the panoptic gaze. Users are not adequately isolated (physically separate, virtually connected), digital trails and local memory caching can make prosecution easier. "In the future, someone could look, but is not looking now...."

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The encoding of messages. A part of the larger field of cryptography. Both Alan Turing and Claude Shannon contributed to the field while working for the military during WWII.

feedback happens with output; output becomes input about state change, and can be used to control a finalized action (complete a goal), and for circulation of information.
positive feedback:
- when output to input accelerates transformation in same direction as it was prior/ cumulative effects. Fire, microphone and speaker, population explosion, inflation, capitalism, cancer are all examples of positive feedback. Positive feedback ultimately leads to self destruction if there is no negative feedback involved.
negative feedback:
- Stabilizes. A negative feedback loop is required to correct actions and is required for goal seeking behavior. A system oscillates around an ideal equilibrium that it never attains. A thermostat or a water tank equipped with a float are simple examples of regulation by negative feedback.

A regulated system achieved through negative feedback.

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By Claude Shannon, introduction by Warren Weaver. Included the following points:
- technical, semantic, effective
- information can be quantifiable
- argues all comm technologies the same, all can be represented by digital data
- speed effects accuracy: above a certain threshold, information gets lost.
- error correction, compression
- critique: assumes single person, no analysis of power relations, interpreting meaning
- how accurately can the message be transmitted? (will you marry me example)
- slippage between communication & transmission
- as an engineer, Claude Shannon was formally concerned with accuracy of transmission
- "What are the most efficient ways to encode information for transmission in the inevitable presence of noise?"
- how precisely is the meaning 'conveyed'? how effectively does the received meaning affect behavior?
- text, telephone signals, radio waves, pictures, film and every other mode of communication could be encoded in the universal language of binary digits, or bits-a term that his article was the first to use in print

Data about data. Can include, time date and location a message was sent, etc. but not the content of the message. Privacy activists argue that since metadata includes personal information, one can build a detailed profile even more so than listening into content.

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"In communication systems, noise is an error or undesired random disturbance of a useful information signal in a communication channel." Anything that degrades the transmission of a signal.

- message break themselves apart into small fragments.
- each fragment has the end address & can find its way to the destination, where packets reassemble.
- ARPAnet first network to use this technology
- Advanced Research Projects Agency at Dept. of Defense

The panopticon, originally designed by Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832), is a model of surveillance and a way to understand how people structured institutions -- prisons, hospitals, schools, factories -- as a result of this surveillance. Power must be visible but unverifiable. Panoptic discipline works by causing the inmate/ worker/ student to internalize the surveillance. One has the sense of being permanently visible. "One is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without being seen." Foucault, from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Protocol are rules that detail specific technical standards such as HTTP (Tim Berners-Lee, 1989): HyperText Transfer Protocol - application layer on top of TCP/IP.
"To help understand the concept of computer protocols, consider the analogy of the highway system. Many different combinations of roads are available to a person driving from point A to point B. However, enroute one is compelled to stop at red lights, stay between white lines, follow a reasonably direct path, and so on. [...] Thus protocol is a technique for achieving voluntary regulation within a contingent environment." -- Alex Galloway, Protocol

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Close watch kept over someone or something. Etymology: French, from surveiller to watch over, from sur- + veiller to watch, from Latin vigilare, from vigil watchful

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