The role of sound in infoscapes

Abstract

In our daily life, we encounter many sources of information or sources that are intended as information. In this essay, the autor focusses on environments containing sources of information that are human-made. He refers to these environments generated by products or systems as infoscapes, analogous to soundscape but as a more general term. Furthermore, in this essay the author makes one other important distinction. He considers information as a concept that is emergent from the processing of the sensed data in the physical outside world (Umgebung), both by human and system and the meaning given to it. This distinction is important because it means that not all data or disturbances in this Umgebung may yield information.