Beyond the Information Age discusses a new way of thinking about computers, knowledge and understanding. See the editorial for more information....



Raw Data Types

As you can see this book is beginning to get a bit technical but as you read on the technicalities are fairly simple. We all live in the MEST universe and it is so common sense to us that we have simply ignored its physical nature for all this time. But now, in order to understand what knowledge is, we must first understand the data that we process.

Let's look again at type SE data, and have you witness it for yourself. Imagine going to a room that you can make completely dark and looking at an image on the wall. Now turn the light off and the image on the wall goes away. The type SE data has stopped because you have deprived it of its energy carrier (the reflected light). You know in the dark that the image is still there because you have knowledge of it stored in your memory.

Now if you had entered the room for the first time in total darkness you would have had no knowledge of the image or what was in the room. Turning on a light makes possible the transmission of type SE data from the wall to your eyes. Once you have seen the light your brain can process the spatial image data and create knowledge of the image. You probably don't need to actually do this experiment because it is simply common sense and you know what to expect. Type SE data can be turned on and off with a simple light switch.

So now you know how to witness type SE data and there are only 15 other data types yet to explain. Let's take type SM data next; here the data is coded in Space and carried in Mass. This data type can be witnessed in a totally dark room. Imagine being in a totally dark room feeling around until you find an object you can pick up. With sensors in your fingers you are able to feel the shape of the object without ever seeing it. The shape you are feeling is spatial data that is carried to your fingers by the mass of the object. By feeling its shape, your brain can now process this type SM data into knowledge about the shape of that object in the room.

Physical objects that exist in our universe can exhibit multiple data types simultaneously. If while feeling an objects shape (type SM data) you were to turn on a light and look at the object and see its image in space, then you would be receiving both types SE and SM data from the object at the same time. This goes even further.

Let's say that the object you picked up was either cold or hot. This is type EM data in that the objects temperature is coded in energy and carried by the mass of the object. An objects temperature can also be sensed by our fingers but what you are sensing is energy not space like you sensed when you sensed the objects SM shape data.




Last Update: 2006-Dec-23