ABSTRACT
It is not, I think, without significance that the present Symposium on information theory contains relatively few papers on the theory of information; but the significance is not, as might be supposed, that the theoretical concepts are now so far worked out that only their applications remain to be discussed. In fact the contrary would be nearer the truth: that most of us who began with an interest in the theoretical concept of information have become so increasingly and profitably absorbed in practical problems of information-processing, in animals or machines, that the general analysis of informational exchange has been largely by-passed, and for the majority of the new generation now leaving college information theory still means little more than Shannon’s measure of unexpectedness and its various applications. Otherwise excellent leading textbooks unashamedly proclaim a divorce between what they call ‘information theory’ and semantics, which topic is discussed, if at all, in the woolliest terms, and generally relegated to the philosopher.
