Social Reaction to the Information

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                                                             Chapter I    
 
   RESPONSE TO THE INFORMATION in NATURE and in THE SOCIETY. 
   
1. RESPONSE TO THE INFORMATION AS THE PROBLEM. 
 
 With the development of scientific and technical revolution the need for the creation 
of information systems and a study of the information processes, which influence 
production and reproduction of information appeared. But this simultaneously meant 
that actively began to be developed the process of response to the information, which 
appears as the need of public practice and, in turn, it becomes an indispensable 
condition for the development of scientific and technical revolution. The fact is that 
with the development of information and the accumulation of knowledge is developed 
relation itself to the information, which occurs in direct dependence on the qualitative 
or semantic aspects of information, its quantitative characteristics and prevalence. In 
other words, this is the inseparable side of information with its production, 
processing, storage and use. 
Social nature of this phenomenon is manifested in the form of response to the 
information, the constant - from the point of view of public organism as such, and 
discrete - from the point of view of the reaction of individual people, groups and 
associations to different information. Thus, response to the information occurs at all 
standards of public and production living of people. From social and information 
points of view response to the information - this is that part of the information activity 
of people, information processes and systems, which is directly connected with the 
social processes and their development, with the production of scientific and technical 
knowledge and public reproduction as a whole. The only conclusion asserts itself: the 
process of response to the information accompanies information process, or, if we 
speak more accurately, these processes are contiguous. A similar phenomenon noted 
already Claude Shannon. "the science about the information accumulated plenty 
experience on the behavior, appropriate arsenal of means, which facilitates response 
to the information" - he wrote in "Bandvagone". Formally response to the information 
was not separated from the information process as the object of experiment, but a 
rapid development of such disciplines as the theory of control, the study of scientific 
study, information theory, semiotics, social psychology, human factors engineering, 
sociology (including concrete sociological studies) and a number of others, is the 
index of research and development of precisely this social- information side of the 
development of science and society. 
 
The analysis of literature shows that, as a rule, in the researchers it is possible to 
reveal the specific sides, which relate to different aspects of response to the 
information, the "work" of this phenomenon and its value for the development of 
science and society, including for the behavior of individuals, groups and the 
associations. In this plan "material" on the use of reaction for the information in the 
behavior of individuals and different public structures, based on the relation to the 
information even when this is not emphasized by the authors, are brought in such 
philosophers, sociologists and cyberneticists as J.G.Mid, G. Parsons, G. Bloomer, 
A.Shutts, L.G.Vygotskiy, S. l. Rubenstein, B. G. Anan'ev, N. Wiener, U. R. Ashby, 
I.Zeman, I. I. Grishkin, A.D. Ursul, B. S. Ukraintsev, B. F. Porshev, 
V.I.Kremyanskiy, V. S. Tyukhtin, V. G. Afanas'ev, N.I. Zhukov and others. 
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 Named scientists, without examining response to the information as the object of 
experiment, much made for understanding of its nature with the development of the 
scientific bases of sociology, cybernetics and nature of information. 
 At the same time one should emphasize that in the literature prevails the separate use 
of concepts of reaction and information, the need to understand, to determine and to 
investigate their nature. It is seemed to us that the interrelation of these two 
phenomena - organic component part of the development of material world. 
 
In other words, we consider response to the information as the form of motion, 
including self-propulsion of the objects of the surrounding reality. In this case the 
material expression of reaction, transferred by all forms of motion (physical, 
biological, chemical and social), the in turn causing reaction of the objects of the 
surrounding reality with their interaction, we call information. 
 Specifically, this dependence of information on the reaction prevails, in our opinion, 
in nature and society and is reflected, as we will show, in scientific studies. 
 
 Nature of information and response to the information  
 
The manifestation of response to the information with interaction and in connection 
with the formation of information and its influence on a change of state and the 
subsequent processes of the reacting objects, and also relation to the information of 
man, his collective formations and society as a whole emphasized and emphasize all 
without the exception researchers, also, first of all specialists in the region of 
information.  
With the determination of nature of information appeared two approaches: attributive 
and functional. If we lay aside the disputes about the acknowledgement of 
information in the inanimate material (i.e. to recognize information as the attribute of 
material), then the functional manifestation of information, i.e. its manifestation with 
interaction of formations and objects, creation, appearance and change in the 
formations and objects - is the regularity, characteristic for motion and reflection 
(mutually-reflection) of material formations and objects. In other words, this is 
reaction of formations and objects with their interaction. Reaction is thus exact 
opposite of information. Without the reaction at least of one of the objects it cannot be 
spoken about the information, since information - result of reaction under interaction 
or influence at least of one object on another. 
In our view, this circumstance to a considerable degree it has an effect on the 
conclusions of researchers about nature of information. Let us give some of them: 
 - in nature and society occurs generation of information as the process of the creation 
of information at any level of material, connected with its qualitative heterogeneous 
change (Kochergin A.N., Tsayer Z. F.); 
 - information appears at the specific level of the organization of material, when 
control processes occur. Information and control - paired categories, each of which 
cannot be opened without another (Ukrainzev B. S); 
 - information – is the variety reflected by man(Ursul A. D.); 
 - information process is such reflection by structure systems of internal and 
environment, whose result is used by them for retaining of its qualitative certainty and 
development (Grishkin I. I.), while "social information process occurs unity, 
interaction of subject and object, recipient and information source" (Ursul A. D.);  
 - information – is the designation of the content, obtained from the external world in 
the process of our adaptation to it of our feelings (Wiener N.); 
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 - while it taken in the cybernetic systems, in living nature and society the information 
takes the form of free, connected, by "corpse", urgent and potential. Since the 
information - is the expediently regulated structure of objects and actions, free 
information - this unity of discontinuous and continuous, the time-spatial structure, 
connected is the structural- organized memory of systems, information in the broad 
sense (Zhukov N. I.); 
 - social information is aspect and result of reflection by the society of both most 
social form of motion of matter and of its all other forms in that measure, in which 
they are used by a society, they are implicated in the orbit of public life 
(Afanas'evV.G., Ursul a. D.); 
 - scientific information - is the obtained in the process of knowledge logical 
information, which adequately represents laws governing the objective world and are 
used in the social-historical practitioner (Mikhaylov A. I., Chernyy A. I., 
GilyarevskiyR. S.); 
 - information - is that which introduces changes in our consciousness or feelings and 
he survives by us mentally, either in the form of production and decision making or in 
the form of various emotions (Sherkovin Yu. A.); 
 - information – is the unity of direct and defined by example with interaction objects 
and phenomena of reality (Kremyanskny V. I.).  
Of the given by us predominantly prevailing in the literature views to nature of 
information and different sides of its manifestation consecutively in inanimate and 
living nature and society characterizes the found with contemporary science place for 
information in the scientific picture of world. Information is not separated from the 
system characteristics of the connections of natural and social objects and phenomena, 
it is the motion characteristic, reflection and interaction of material objects. However, 
these attributes of material world turned out to be connected with the steady from the 
time of the appearance of cybernetics in the 40's of present century diagram - "system 
- information - control". The basic signs of information in this diagram, in turn, 
proved to be entropy, uncertainty, variety, from one side, ordering and negentropy - 
with another. These concepts transfer the defined states and the changes, proceeding 
both inside the system, and outside it and contribute to understanding information as 
the taken uncertainty, the measure of organization, and also limited or variety 
reflected. 
         Meanwhile it is not difficult to note that the view on the information, for 
example, as to the variety reflected, is not adequate the taken uncertainty, but the 
measure of organization or of ordering - the concept of the statistical-probability 
theory, created on the basis of mathematical apparatus for the substantiation first of all 
of the practical purposes of the theory of connection, and then cybernetics - they are 
not adequate to concept, let us say, to social information as aspect and to the result of 
reflection by the society of the social form of the motion of mater and its other forms, 
implicated in the orbit of public life. Realizing difference in the definitions, which 
reflect the separate sides of its nature, one of the key personnel in field of 
philosophical questions of information A. В. Ursul pointed to the expediency of a 
similar approach under the conditions of the absence of united determination.  
To the analogous views to nature of information come other authors. As it 
emphasizes D.I. Blyumenau, "recently began to speak out considerations, that the 
information, apparently, generally relates to the number of undefined, initial concepts 
of science". At the same time, after raising a question about the relationship of 
concepts "knowledge" and "social information", according to Blyumenau it comes to 
the following conclusion: "as independent essence in the sphere of social 
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communications, qualitatively different from the knowledge, information, probably 
myth as the form of the functioning of knowledge, possibly, reality". 
  From our point of view, the interest present studies of information in the works 
B. S. Ukraintsev. The possibility of examining of information and control as the 
paired category and analyzing the determination of information, given by N. Wiener 
in the book "Cybernetics and society", Ukraintsev expressed a whole series of the 
considerations, which influenced the formation of our view about the unity of 
information and the reaction on it. It was noted, that the important specific special 
feature of information, not mentioned in the determination of N. Wiener, lies in the 
fact that "the information expresses not only the content external for the controlled 
system of events, but also events, proceeding in the component parts of system itself 
(information of feedback, information - command), or is expressed not only the 
content of the past and present events, but also the events, which must occur in the 
future". Thus, information - this content of reflection (special feature of mapping 
object) plus is the transfer of this content along the communication channel, plus 
processing the content of reflection during the control process by comparison, 
generalization and so forth in our view, this is a process of response to the 
information, proceeding with interaction of the objects of living nature and subjects of 
action, people in particular. 
 Further B. S. Ukraintsev connects the aforementioned determination of 
N.Wiener that the information with the reaction to the external action, which, 
depending on reflection in the system, contributes to the systematic adaptation of 
system to the ambient conditions and to their change, it indicates direct connection of 
information and reaction to it. 
 Being based on the views B. S. Ukraintsev  V. S. Tyukhtin notes that "the 
ability to react to the relations of actions (to their relative, but not only absolute 
values) is the objective criterion of reflective (information) processes from the 
processes of interaction of the inanimate nature, the criterion of a difference in the 
information causality from the usual physical causality".  
In our opinion, proposal B. S. Ukraintsev to examine information and control, 
on the basis of their connection, as the paired category draws near us examination of 
the connection of information with the reaction. Since from the point of view of the 
formation of information itself this connection is more organic, what also finds its 
reflection in the form of its motion - response to the information.  
It is possible to say that the response to the information, in particular, in the 
human society, is a form of existence of people in the human society, moreover, the 
form social development, i.e. the "powerful, continuously working estimating 
apparatus", but not only science, but all forms of public consciousness, that includes 
the interconnected processes of knowledge and propagation of knowledge or that the 
fact that N. Wiener named the "organic reaction of society herself". 
Of that examined above it is possible to make following conclusions. 
In all examples mentioned above, exactly as in entire in nature, society and 
thinking occurs the response to the information, which is included in the process of 
self-propulsion and connected with the fact that the response to the information occurs 
with interaction of the objects of reality, evolving in the course of their development 
in the time and the space and thus of those interacting in that form, in which them 
interaction finds. Specifically, in this case occurs transfer or the mutually-transfer of 
those sides of interaction of the objects, which depend on the form of the motion of 
matter and conditions of reflection and mutually-reflection with interaction of objects. 
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         In other words, with interaction, limited by the material forms of its 
manifestation, occurs response to the information of objects, which is connected with 
the action, the reflection and the transfer of those special features of the corresponding 
form of the motion of matter, which at present be called information. Thus in nature, 
society and thinking occurs the process of response to the information, which in turn 
acts on the nature of motion, which influences interactions, by way of feedback, it is 
connected thus with the process, which characterizes control in the society. In this 
case the conclusion, which can be made about nature of information, consists in the 
fact that the information, which it is transferred through living nature and the through 
the man, it includes and thus in itself contains its contradiction - reaction for the 
information as the result of interaction of objects. 
One should emphasize that the motives of interaction of the objects of the 
unconscious and conscious use of information find, as is known, reflection in 
semantic and pragmatic information theories, in accordance with which the 
information occurs only in living nature and society. However, the already 
preliminary conceptual analysis of the process of response to the information shows 
that it has universal for nature and society`s nature.  
Taking into account the influence of the mentioned theories, I. I. Grishkin comes 
to the following conclusion relative to the information process: "information process 
is such reflection by structure systems of internal and environment, whose result is 
used by them for retaining of its qualitative certainty and development". In our view, 
this process, as can be seen from definition, it is not completely information. It 
includes another process - the process of response to the information, which, in our 
opinion, must be separated from the information process.  
By response to the information we understand process and result of the process 
of interaction of units and systems in living nature and society. With the formation of 
living nature the complication of reactions occurs, self-development and development 
of living organisms and essences rises the level of the organization of the living 
beings. With raising the level of the organization of the living beings of ever of more 
durable becomes the connection of information and reaction to it, which naturally 
influences control and self-guidance of the living beings. Selectivity rises both with 
respect to of information and reaction to it. 
 Response to the information in the cybernetic systems. 
 Cybernetics as other directions of science, regularly emphasizes control 
capability, because of the reaction of material units and systems to the information, 
since response to the information in reality is the constitutional (forming) basis of 
control. In other words, control is organically-bound with the response to the 
information.  
The conditions of response to the information are implicitly assigned in the 
fundamental positions of cybernetics and information theory, that characterize by 
themselves control, connection and transmission of the information: cycle 
"perception, processing, storage and the output of information", the principle of 
feedback and need for selection with the reaction at least of two possible. 
 It well known that noise, which accompanies information in the cases of its 
transfer and perception, in many respects is explained by the result of the reaction of 
the transmitting and receiving systems. A whole series of theoretical positions and 
concepts, advanced in connection with the development of cybernetics and 
information theory also at basis its considers response to the information. 
  Such concepts, for example, include academician A. I. Berg's view on 
cybernetics as the science about the developing dynamic systems, or, let us say, idea