Information is the enclosure of meaning: Cybernetics, semiotics, and alternative theories of information Paul Kockelman Department of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, United States article info abstract This essay carefully reviews and further develops some overlooked theories of information, grounding them in a more general theory of meaning. And it argues that information is best understood as the enclosure of meaning: an attempt to render a highly messy and stereo- typically human process relatively formal, quantifiable, and context-independent. It high- lights the ideas of Donald MacKay in relation to those of Claude Shannon, and it foregrounds the semiotic framework of Charles Sanders Peirce in relation to cybernetics (and the then-incipient discipline of computer science). It shows how Katherine Hayles and Mark Hansen, two influential theorists of new media, misread MacKay in their attempt to put the ‘human’ (as well as affect, meaning, the body, and so forth) back into a theory of information. And it thereby shows that the framework these theorists seek was, in some sense, already well developed before cybernetics even entered the scene. It offers two alternative definitions of information, one focusing on interaction (individuals and prac- tices) and the other focusing on institutions (collectivities and structures), that effectively mediate between relatively quantitative theories of information and relatively qualitative theories of meaning. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction At the most abstract level, this essay argues that information is the enclosure of meaning. In part, this means that informa- tion is a species of meaning that is relatively regimented as to its use-value, truth-value, and exchange-value. In part, this means that it is a species of meaning that has been relatively mediated by technology, science, and economy. And in part, this means that the values in question (be they signs, objects, or interpretants) become relatively portable: not so much inde- pendent of context, as dependent on contexts which have been engineered so as to be relatively ubiquitous, and hence seem- ingly context-free. 1 While the focus in what follows will be on the relation between information and meaning (and thus, relatively speaking, the relation between signs and objects), we could also focus on the signer–interpreter (or sender–receiver) relation, and ar- gue that infrastructure is the enclosure of interaction (Kockelman, 2011). And we could focus on the sign-interpretant (or input–output) relation, and argue that computation is the enclosure of interpretation (Kockelman, 2013). In this way, we could focus on a set of concomitant processes whereby semiosis gets not only automated, but also formatted and networked. This essay should thus be understood as just one part of a much larger project. 0271-5309/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2013.01.002 E-mail address: pk2113@columbia.edu 1 Kockelman (2007a, 2013; and see Bernstein and Kockelman 2013) takes up the notion of enclosure in a more general and developed sense. In particular, the other modes of enclosure discussed there should be understood as applicable to information (meaning), computation (interpretation), and infrastructure (interaction) as well. Reasons of space prohibit the pursuit of this more general framing here. Language & Communication 33 (2013) 115–127 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Language & Communication journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langcom