# A Dialogue Concerning the Essence and Role of Information in the World System
## 2 The Dialogue
**J**: As mentioned previously, we can conceive info-autopoiesis or self-produced information as central to humankind, but this ability may be extended more generally to all cognitive beings that exist in nature. This goes to the heart of whether or not humankind is unique as to its abilities when compared to other living beings. Asserting our uniqueness does not require denying the uniqueness of other living beings, or even constraining their abilities due to our inability to access their world. **M**: I can agree that people created an infosphere and that all living beings created even a larger infosphere. Nevertheless, your statement causes many other questions. First, do only living beings produce information, or can information be produced by other systems? Second, do all living beings create information or only some of them? Third, is all information created by living beings or only a part of it? Four, do people only create information, or do they also receive information? Then, what does it mean to receive a difference? Fifth, do people create or produce information from nothing or from something else? Six, do only living beings contain/store information, or can other natural and/or artificial systems also contain/store information? In addition, what does it mean to store difference? Seven, if living beings only create information, then what does information transmission mean? Then, what does it mean to transmit difference? **J**: I am glad that we are in agreement as to that people created an infosphere and that all living beings created even a larger infosphere. Of course, this cannot but raise many additional questions such as the seven questions you have framed. Let me answer each question, in turn, as thoroughly as possible to allow us to come to a better understanding of our positions. So, let us consider the first question, asking whether only living beings produce information or information can be produced by other systems. I want to propose and postulate that all living beings engage in a process of info-autopoiesis, i.e., in a process of self-production of information. This extends the concept of autopoiesis by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [21; 22], who did not consider information as an element of autopoiesis. Indeed, the process of info-autopoiesis is the basis to understanding information in biology. This proposal could be considered as an attempt to do what [PERSON] [32] suggested when he identified the need for the inclusion of information in autopoiesis. In the case of tool-making and machine-making living beings, this implies that the systems that are created by people and other living beings can also have the capacity to produce information. To better organize my explanation of this issue, I would like to divide the history of information utilization and exploration into two major epochs. In the **first information epoch**, the need to provide a quantitative/objective appraisal of information might have existed but was not a priority. There was an implicit understanding (qualitative/subjective) of information as something that added to our existing knowledge, i.e., \"when 'what we know' has changed\" [33], with mostly semantic undertones. The major producers and consumers of information in this time period were human beings. Note that our understanding of information as \"when 'what we know' has changed\" has the connotation of difference, i.e., something has changed. However, we can also view this from another perspective that few would ascribe to information, but it is just as real: the role of human actions and effort (labor) exerted on our environment, which is more directly related to [PERSON]'s \"difference which makes a difference\" producing changes in our environment. This perspective also falls in line with a historically meaningful perspective on the word information.