The cucumber season is in full swing for this augustpublication as for any

Tag : cucumber
I would like to introduce a new term to the English language:"Cucumber season". The term, from Norwegian, refers to the periodfrom sometime in early June, when Parliament and the public schoolsrecess, until mid-August when the schools start up again and peoplereturn from their summer holidays. The name of this season comesfrom the observation that during this period, newspapers havelittle to write about - since nothing much happens - and so areforced to report on non-news, such as outsized and/or weirdlyshaped vegetables such as cucumbers. By extension, the term refersto newspaper articles as well - a padded-out news item of dubiousimportance and inflated headline is referred to as a cucumber.

Which gives me reason to reflect: How doesthe nature of information change when there is little of it?

Information content is actually subject to laws, much like Newton'slaws of physics. The Newton of information theory was MIT professorClaude Shannon, who in 1948 wrote an article called "TheMathematical Theory of Communication" in the Bell System Technical Journal . (Incidentally, Shannon was known as the epitome of the eccentric(he was interested in juggling and unicycling) and absent-mindedprofessor, once asking a colleague he had met and conversed with atlength in MIT's "endless corridor" which direction he had comefrom. When so informed, he said "Good - then I have had lunch,"thereby proving (or, at least, illustrating) his own theory, as weshall see later.)

The Mathematical Theory of Communication (later popularized andexpanded into a book with Warren Weaver) forms, as the title says,the mathematical underpinning for much communications technology.One central statement is that the value of a message (that is, theinformation content) is inversely related to the probability ofreceiving it. That is, the less likely you are to receive amessage, the more important you will think its contents.

Let's pause for a small illustration here. The town Bergen islocated on Norway's West coast, facing the North Sea and hemmed inby high mountains. Consequently, it rains a lot. In fact, if you gothere, you are likely to be told the story of the tourist couplewho jokingly asked a small boy whether it always rained in Bergen,and got the answer "I don't know - I am only five years old.)

Clearly, the message "It will rain tomorrow" does not carry muchvalue in Bergen. In the Sahara, however, a sage wishing toestablish his clairvoyance (or access to the latest communicationsequipment) predicting rain would establish hard core credibility,provided that the expected downpour materialized, of course.

(If I may go out on a tangent here, knowledge of this law may giveyou a good time the next time you attend a corporate strategypresentation. These are usually rather droll affairs with anexecutive dishing out platitudes and calling them strategies, suchas "Our goal is profitable growth" or "Our strategy is to satisfyour customers." Neither of these statements are strategies, ofcourse, since strategy implies choice. So, next time you hear a CEOdroning on like this, raise your hand and ask him or her: "That isa very good strategy, but what alternative strategies have yourejected by settling on this one?" A good time is guaranteed.)<

So, there is more information in a message the less likely you areto receive it. And this helps you pick out what is important in theconstant torrent of information that now surrounds us. You rememberthat which surprised you. Consequently, a purveyor of informationneeds to surprise you to keep you interested. The degree ofsurprise is a function of the legitimacy of the source itself(think National Enquirer vs. The New York Times ) and to what extent the same message is coming from other sourcesat the same time (thus accumulating legitimacy.)

When there is little information around, however, we tend tooverfocus on what little information there is. Attention is afinite resource, and information items compete for it. Lessinformation around, more attention directed to each item.

Astute message senders know this. Some authors have succeeded inincreasing the weight given to their emissions by either cloakingtheir personal lives in secrecy (J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon,for instance) or very publicly cutting off output (Tom Lehrer). (Alearned and prolific writer friend of mine was considering thisstrategy over a glass of wine recently, concluding that it might bea good idea but that he would not be able to contain himself longenough for the hiatus to have promotional value - his personallimit of two weeks offline before reappearing to a thankful worldsimply doesn't cut it.) Joe Klein, anonymous writer of Primary Colors , undoubtedly increased sales of his book first by his anonymityand then by his (apparently unwilling) unmasking by Don Foster -who used techniques based on information theory to do it.Deliberate confusion can also work: John Twelve Hawks, thepseudonym behind the writer of the science fiction/spy story The Traveler , has invented a whole identity for himself, claiming to live "offthe grid" without identifiable information, and including tips onhow to do so in his book. (For practical training, see the web siteat http://www.randomhouse.com/features/traveler . My guess? Probably a publicity stunt - the author will turn outto live in a suburb with three kids, an urban assault vehicle, abroadband connection and several other books to his real name. Justwait for the text analysis).

The fact remains: When news is scarce, we may lower our attentionbut still have enough to give more to each item. Since senders andreceivers have a shared interest in keeping the communication going(in case any real news happens) they collaborate by lowering thebar on what is considered newsworthy. That opens opportunities foranyone with a message: The publicity-seeking andavailability-offering politician, the organizer of the less thanstellar cultural event, the company launching yet another me-tooproduct, all know that when news is slow, access is possible.

There are, to quote the well known web log Marginal Revolution , "markets in everything." In the information market, the currencyis attention, and the amount of attention given to a message(absent access to other reader's attention scores) determined bythe inverse of the probability of getting it, adjusted for other,available messages.

Hence this essay - which may not be improbable or unexpected, butat least, given the season, might qualify as an oddly shaped

.

References:
C. E. Shannon: A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal , vol. 27, pp. 379-423 and 623-656, July and October, 1948(available as a PDF file from cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf )
Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver: The Mathematical Theory of Communication. The University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1949. JohnTwelve Hawks: The Traveler . Doubleday, 2005

Espen Andersen (www.espen.com) would dearly like to withhold information on himself in order toincrease his importance, but fear that it is already too late.



Source: Ubiquity Volume 6, Issue 31 (August 16 - 23, 2005)



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