In this article we will review some notions of infiniteness that appear in
Hilbert space operators and operator algebras. These include proper
infiniteness, Murray von Neumann's classification into type I and type III
factors and the class of F{/o} lner C*-algebras that capture some aspects of
amenability. We will also mention how these notions reappear in the description
of certain mathematical aspects of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and
the theory of superselection sectors. We also show that the algebra of the
canonical anti-commutation relations (CAR-algebra) is in the class of F{/o}
lner C*-algebras.Comment: 11 page