## 3 Information as Function
### Information as Control  
News relates to information on the content level, and various efforts to analyze news would constitute metainformation on the relationship or medium level. As noted earlier, information overload gives rise to new methods and technologies that organize, analyze, and synthesize, and otherwise perform the function of control. Indeed, [PERSON] believed the function of control to be so central to the concept of information that he coined the term _cybernetics_ to refer to a new science of control [71,72], paralleling [PERSON]'s information theory [2]. [PERSON] went so far as to declare that _communication is control_, by which he meant that the transmission of information into an environment has an influence on that environment, and therefore serves to control that environment in certain ways. Note here that we are no longer referring to metainformation used to control information on the content level, functioning internally within an information system, but rather to information used to control some aspect of the external environment (which could be viewed as an information system in its own right). As opposed to _news_, which corresponds to information on the content level, _control_ corresponds to information on the relationship or medium level (but can constitute a response to news as feedback, or feedforward). In military circles, the function is referred to a _command and control_, and indeed, any medium of communication can be used for the purposes of control. [PERSON] notes that the ability to communicate over space is necessary for control over territory, so technologies of transmission and transportation are essential to organized force [20]. Writing is a key technology for organizing armies as well as massive labor projects in the ancient world, as [PERSON] makes clear [73], and [PERSON] particularly stressed the relationship between light media such as papyrus used as a writing surface, and the expansion of power from the settlement of cities to the conquest of empires in the ancient world. Heavy media can also be seen as performing the function of control, in this case over time, but information storage is a one-way form of transmission, and therefore lacks the ability inherent in two-way systems to receive feedback and adjust accordingly. [PERSON] argues that feedback is the key to enhanced control, and writing, as a medium that allows for messages to be sent back and forth, provides that cybernetic function. Although [PERSON]'s discussion of the mechanical clock [38] precedes and therefore does not use [PERSON]'s terminology, it is clear that this innovation, invented in 13 th century Europe, was a form of information technology, a forerunner of the computer and a cybernetic technology [47, 74]. The mechanical clock produced no physical product, but rather functioned only to disseminate information. Its multiple, identical units (e.g., hours, later minutes, and seconds), while evolving out of the digital technologies of writing and the alphabet [7], set the stage for mechanization, mass production, and eventually industrialism. But most important of all, as [PERSON] argues, the main function of the mechanical clock was to control and coordinate human activity [38]. First developed in monasteries as a means of getting monks to pray at the appointed times of day, the technology was quickly adopted by towns, where its ability to synchronize action was put to commercial use. The metaphor that time is money originates from this point of transition. Printing represented a further extension of mechanization, and while lacking an effective feedback mechanism (although the exchange of written messages could still be employed), its potential for mass dissemination of information made it a very powerful blunt instrument of control; that the messages were identical in form introducing an unprecedented homogenizing force into human culture that was instrumental in establishing the modern nation-state, and its colonial empires [7, 20, 29].