The World as Evolving Information

This paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter problems because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms of matter and energy, since their laws are valid only at the physical scale. However, if matter and energy, as well as life and cognition, are described in terms of information, evolution can be described consistently as information becoming more complex. The paper presents five tentative laws of information, valid at multiple scales, which are generalizations of Darwinian, cybernetic, thermodynamic, and complexity principles. These are further used to discuss the notions of life and cognition and their evolution

Information Competencies: Bridging the North-South Knowledge Gap (Mortenson Distinguished Lecture)

Knowledge is readily available in middle-income developing countries through international information repositories on the Internet. However, most citizens from the Southern Hemisphere do not possess the information skills or information competencies to access, use and understand such knowledge wealth. Most economically evolving developing countries have made progress in education in recent decades, but they still lag behind in information use/generation, such as book and serials production. Their educational systems seem to inhibit the development of information skills, i.e., competencies that are crucial to citizens to benefit from increasing knowledge growth or to cope with ever-present technological innovations and the changing complexities of the world economy. The development of information competencies in Southern countries is critical to reduce North-South gaps, where knowledge inequality is probably the most important among them. In this paper, information development indicators are utilized to illustrate the current knowledge status of countries and the significant role that constructivist educational systems play in the development of information competencies