 |
rules, books are arranged on the shelves according to the color of their bindings (Figure 06). There may be a thousand red books grouped together in one section of the shelves. This arrangement contains a certain amount of order and conveys some information, but not as much as in the first library. Since there are no rules governing the ordering of books on the shelves by title and author within the red section, the number of possible ways of arranging the books is much greater. If the borrower knows that "War and Peace" has a red binding, he will proceed to the right section, but then he will have to examine each book in turn until he chances upon the one he is looking for. Then imagine a third library, in which all the rules have broken down. The books are strewn at random on any shelf or on a desk (as the case in Figure 03). "War and Peace" could be anywhere in the building. There is no denying that the books are in a certain sequence, but the sequence is a "noise," not a message. It is only one of a truly immense number of possible ways of arranging the books, and there is no telling which one, because all are equally probable. A borrower's ignorance of the actual arrangement is great in proportion to the quantity of these possible, equally probable ways.
|