## 3 Information as Function
### Information as News  
[PERSON] emphasizes the fact that information is essentially about _differences_, including and especially second order differences, that is, _differences that make a difference_[51]. The function of information constitutes an alert about changes or differences in the environment of an organism, or in its own internal workings. As he puts it:  
When I strike the head of a nail with a hammer, an impulse is transmitted to its point. But it is a semantic error, a misleading metaphor, to say that what travels in an axon is an \"impulse\". It could correctly be called _news_ of a difference (emphasis added). [61]  
The discernment of difference can be seen as a form of cognition, or information processing, and it is a function that can be carried out by a variety of different systems, be they biological, technological, or sociological. Systems at the very least must maintain a boundary against their environment, in order to maintain their integrity and identity, their very existence as systems separate from their environment. This closing off from the environment is associated with the process termed _autopoiesis_ by [PERSON] and [PERSON], the self-organization of the system [62,63], and while their focus is biology, the concept can be generalized to other types of systems, including social systems [64, 65, 66]. Establishing a boundary between system and environment, self and not-self, is essential, but that boundary must, to some degree, be permeable, open enough to allow the system to absorb whatever materials and energy it needs to maintain and renew itself, and the ability to differentiate between what in the environment is safe and nourishing to absorb and what is not, also involves information processing, and therefore a form of cognition. If we use the metaphor of information as substance, we might say that, first and foremost, what the organism is open to is information about the environment, or as [PERSON] would put it, news about the environment (for this reason, I like to say, as a variation on [PERSON], that _the medium is the membrane_). From a functional perspective, gathering and processing news about the environment is one of main tasks of the system's boundary, along with maintaining the integrity of the system itself. The sociological function of surveillance of the environment [60] is considered universal to the human species (and to other social species as well), and the internal dissemination of information about the environment, and about other parts of the system, is what we commonly refer to as _news_. [PERSON], in his _History of News_, notes that in oral cultures, news was transmitted by word of mouth, by messengers, criers and singers, and by such media as smoke signals and talking drums [67]. The introduction of writing allowed for more formal approaches to news to develop, for example news sheets such as the ancient Roman _acta_ and Chinese _tipao_. The printing revolution resulting from [PERSON]'s mid-15 th century invention gave rise to various forms of pamphlets, letters, broadsheets, _etc._, that functioned as news media, and eventually to the newspaper itself beginning in the 17 th century. The innovation of the printed newspaper as a periodical published frequently and according to a regular schedule established the media environment within which the modern concept of news could begin to emerge. Printing gave us the first form of mass communication, allowing for the mass dissemination of information, but whether and to what degree mass media actually transmit information about the environment as opposed to manufacturing news in their own image is a matter of some debate [33, 66, 68, 69]. It is certainly the case that the content of news media is shaped by the technologies and codes used to disseminate it, which in part is what [PERSON] meant in saying that the medium is the message [4, 7].