We might regard patterning or predictability as the very essence and
raison d'être of communication - communication is the creation
of redundancy or patterning.

If information is pattern, then noninformation should be the absence
of pattern, that is, randomness.

This pattern/randomness dialectic does not erase the material world;
information in fact derives its efficacy from the material
infrastructures it appears to obscure. This illusion of erasure
should be the subject of inquiry, not a presupposition that inquiry
takes for granted.

When I laid there beside you, could you feel me there? My arms were
wrapped around you, and I was stroking your neck.

The compounding of signal with materiality suggests that new
technologies will instantiate new models of signification.
Information technologies do more than change modes of text
production, storage, and dissemination. They fundamentally alter the
relation of signified to signifier. Carrying the instabilities
implicit in floating signifiers one step further, information
technologies create what I will call flickering signifiers,
characterized by their tendency toward unexpected metamorphoses,
attenuations, and dispersions.

Related