In the Beginning was Information

Knowledge of the conventions applying to the actual encoding aswell as to the allocation of meanings is equally essential for both thesender and the recipient. This knowledge is either transferred directly(e. g. by being introduced into a computer system or by beinginherited in the case of natural systems), or it must be learned fromscratch (e. g. mother tongue or any other natural language).No person enters this world with the inherited knowledge of somelanguage or some conceptual system. Knowledge of a language isacquired by learning the applicable vocabulary and grammar asthey have been established in the conventions of the language concerned.4.3 The Third Level of Information: SemanticsWhen we read the previously mentioned book B, we are not interestedin statistics about the letters, neither are we concerned withthe actual grammar, but we are interested in the meaning of thecontents.Symbol sequences and syntactic rules are essential for the representationof information, but the essential characteristic of the conveyedinformation is not the selected code, neither is it the size,number, or form of the letters, or the method of transmission (inwriting, or as optical, acoustic, electrical, tactile or olfactory signals),but it is the message being conveyed, the conclusions and themeanings (semantics). This central aspect of information plays norole in storage and transmission, since the cost of a telegram forexample, does not depend on the importance of the message, butonly on the number of letters or words. Both the sender and therecipient are mainly interested in the meaning; it is the meaning thatchanges a sequence of symbols into information. So now we havearrived at the third level of information, the semantic level (Greeksemantikós = characteristic, significance, aspect of meaning).Typical semantic questions are:a) Concerning the sender:– What are the thoughts in the sender’s mind?69