Imperfect information flow

Abstract

The view that computers are information processors is commonplace. They are used, for the most part successfully, throughout our society, as reliable links in the transmission of information and knowledge. Yet the formulation of a precise, qualitative conception of information and a theory of the transmission of information has proved elusive, despite the many other successes of computer science. The authors set out the motivation for and a skeleton of a new mathematical model of information flow, one that is compatible with less than perfect flow.<>