Research Area

Culture in Cycles

This is my baby, my personally most interesting and maybe important work. I have been chipping away at it, now and then, since about 2010. The papers below are some of the pieces.

The ‘information cycle’ is HT Odum’s systems model for information production, maintenance, and transmission into the future. Information is valuable to systems because it encodes their structure and function, which guides system formation and reformation. All information requires a physical carrier of some type, nucleotides, paper, electromagnetic storage, etc. Per the Second Law, all physical concentrations inevitably degrade. Therefore, nature and culture have self-organized mechanisms for the copying of information and the perpetuation of the system. That is the information cycle.

The information cycle was originally conceived as a reproduction lifecycle for living organisms. Adults are selected for mating, information is extracted, copies are made, they are dispersed, they live their lives, and some may be again selected. But Odum felt that the information cycle was a general model that could be applied to information of all kinds. He had a broad notion of cultural information, and conceptions of a few specific information forms. He often spoke of religion and government as valuable information forms. In my 2014 paper I expanded the model to forms familiar to anthropologists: conversation (discourse), social media, news media, ritual, formal education, academic research, and legal codes. I described each of these forms in detail in terms of information cycles.

There is a lot more to say! There is psychology. There is language. There is finance. There is war. There is music and dance. You can find some of that in the papers below. Or you can wait for the book, coming to a bookseller near you! One of these days.

Papers

  • 2009 “A General Model of Information: the 'Information Cycle' of H.T. Odum and Its Application to 'Culture'. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), Brisbane, Australia, July 16, 2009.

    • This was an exciting experience to attend an ISSS meeting in Brisbane. My session was small and in attendance were 3 past presidents of the ISSS. Len Troncale was especially pleased with the paper, shaking my hand twice, I remember. I know now that he was a big fan of HT. TFH Allen was also there, the ‘hierarchy and scales’ guy and president at the time. I still remember his advice to me about conferences, “I usually spend most of my time at the bar.” I’ll attach the ppt (pdf), there are two other versions of the paper below. I have to say that I’m amazed that this started in 2009, I didn’t remember that. Five years until it made it into the IJGS. People outside of academia don’t know what it takes to publish a paper. But also, I don’t do anything very fast.

  • 2010 “The Evolution of Cultural Informations in ‘Information Cycles’ ” Poster presented at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Eugene, Oregon, July 16, 2010.

    • This was a chance to see the HBES society in action. This is my ‘information cycles’ paper again, but in poster form. Not worth sharing.

  • 2011 “Culture in Information Cycles: An Emergy Evaluation of Conversation.” In Proceedings of the 6th Biennial Emergy Research Conference, Chapter 2, Gainesville, FL, 2010.

    • I presented two papers at this conference. Very ambitious! This was my second paper on Dr. Odum’s ‘information cycle’ model. I had forgotten that I attempted an ‘emergy’ analysis of this subject that I am now pursuing vigorously, though without emergy for the most part. My ‘locations’ paper from this emergy conference I like very much (in Emergy Accounting).

  • 2011 “Cultural Evolution in a Nested Hierarchy of ‘Information Cycles’: The Case of Conversation. ” Poster presented at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), Montpellier, France, July 2, 2011

    • I gave the HBES another try. Again, they would not let me give a paper. I had conducted my conversation experiment during the preceding school year (see 2015 below). This was my first reporting of that work. Again, I was very much an outsider.

  • 2014 “Culture in Cycles: Considering H.T. Odum's 'Information Cycle'.” International Journal of General Systems. 43(1):44-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/03081079.2013.852188

    • This paper is a very BIG deal for me. I submitted the paper to Current Anthropology and two other journals until I finally went back to the ISSS crowd at the IJGS. This is part of my cover letter to the journal: “Since [the 2009 conference, the paper] has been improved and submitted to two anthropology journals (my field). However, they apparently could not accommodate the cross-disciplinary nature of the subject. In fact, this is indeed a general systems paper, and perhaps I should have come here from the start, but I was trying to spread the word about systems and apparently they are not ready to hear it. The article transcends the boundaries between a number of fields, anthropology, ecology, media and communication, education, science and technology, law, evolution, and complexity science. The topic of the paper is ‘culture’, and as you see I am applying the information theoretical framework from H.T. Odum of the ‘information cycle’ to this topic. As an anthropologist also trained in systems ecology (under Odum), I feel I am uniquely situated for this task. The paper spans a number of issues of great interest to general systems – information, complexity, learning, hierarchy, scale, and self-organization. These topics are part of a synthetic formulation of ‘culture’ as a hierarchy of cultural forms that are produced and reproduced within a nested hierarchy of information cycles.” That’s an ok summary. I covered a lot of ground in the paper, including a diagram of ‘Memory and Cultural Knowledge’, that I still like very much. It also contains my first nested ‘Hierarchy of Information Cycles’ diagram that I continue to use and expand, including in my 2023 paper below.

  • 2015 “Cultural Transmission in Cycles: The Production and Maintenance of Cumulative Culture.” Journal of Cognition and Culture, 15:443–492. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342161

    • This paper is also a BIG deal for me. It was an actual behavioral experiment to explore the theoretical principles from the 2014 paper. I had never conducted an experiment. I had funding, I had a research assistant. How to attack it? I decided to focus on one of the ‘scales’ of cultural information - conversation. The study used pencil and paper (P&P) diaries for self-reporting of conversation topics and participants. Self-reporting is technically referred to as momentary assessment (MA) in the psychological literature, ‘momentary’ because the participant will report on events close in time to the moment of experience. Over three weeks, among thirty-two students, how many different conversation topics were discussed? How many were shared widely? What was the duration of sharing of one topic? Are there recognizable patterns of sharing? There was very little of the expected linear transmission. Instead, classroom lectures, news media, rituals, and other scales of cultural information served to focus conversation to shared topics. A regular pulsing pattern was observed for events that focused conversation. Many interesting issues conclude the paper.

  • 2016 “Pools of Money: ‘Information Cycles’ for the Production and Maintenance of Financial Information”. In Proceedings of the 9th Biennial Emergy Research Conference, Chapter 34, Gainesville, FL, 2016

    • This paper was very well received by the emergy crowd. I had spent the previous school year (2015/16) in America with my second son attending second grade (him not me). Taiwan schools are not sweet and nurturing for young kids. I wanted him to have a chance to experience some of that. My intention when I went was to begin work on the book, Culture in Cycles. Instead, I became fascinated by a single new scale of information, the scale of finance. Still in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and the more recent ‘flash crash' caused by high-speed computer trading, I wanted to know more, and I wanted to put it in terms of the information cycle. I spent the whole year reading and writing. This paper was the result.

    • I could not figure out a way to publish it. Financial journals, no chance. It will go in my book.

  • 2017 “Manufacturing in Cycles: Tertiary No More!”. Paper presented at the International Society for Ecological Modelling Global Conference (ISEM 2017), September 17-21, 2017, Ramada Plaza, Jeju, Korea.

    • This is my attempt to view manufacturing as a hierarchy of production. It is not bad for a first try, and it will go in my book also.

  • 2018 “The Role of the ‘Information Cycle’ in Cultural Evolution” Paper presented at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Culture and Evolution Society (CES), Tempe, Arizona, October 22, 2018.

    • I wanted to try yet again to reach the ‘new cultural evolutionists’ with my information cycles work. The new society of the CES was having its second meeting in Arizona. This was the HBES crowd, but with less emphasis on evolutionary psychology (EP). Unlike the HBES conferences, this society allowed me to present a paper. I will attach the presentation. It is the most complete summary of the work and ideas to that point. There was no actual paper, my intention was to communicate the ideas and hopefully get feedback. I remember being extremely jetlagged. During the school year, I did not have the time to arrive early and adjust. I therefore missed all the beer-calls, and so the best times to socialize. I won’t do that again. The ppt is worth perusing if interested, I spent a lot of time putting it together. This version has text on the slides, so good for sharing. For the presentation version, the text was hidden in the notes for each slide.

    • For all this conferencing (Brisbane, Eugene, Montpellier, Jeju, and several trips to Gainesville) what did I learn? Only Brisbane and Gainesville were valuable to me. I might not be the conference type.

  • 2023 “Building With/On Howard T. Odum’s Theory of Information.” International Journal of General Systems. Pages 473-523. https://doi.org/10.1080/03081079.2022.2162048

    • This paper is another BIG deal for me. A few years prior, I realized that I wanted to dig deeper into Odum’s ideas about information. I started reading broadly, but focused to any papers/books that dealt with information. This was very educational for me, and it began my deep reading of basically everything written by Odum that I am continuing today, and that resulted in my “HT Odum’s Contributions to Evolutionary Theory” paper (in Complex Systems), and in my current paper, “Energy as Explanation: HT Odum vs. White, Rappaport, Adams, and Smil”.

    • This paper has three parts, the first is the literature review of Odum’s information. The results are two tables that summarize his information, what it IS, and what it DOES. The second part applies Odum’s energy theories to explain why my nested hierarchy of cultural information appears and why the hierarchy differs in place and in time. The third part is a summary and update of my proposed ‘scales’ or ‘mediums’ of cultural information. See the webinar video that I gave for discussion and explanation.

  • 2024 “Parallel Cycles for the Emergy Evaluation of Information in Manufacturing, Culture, and Life”. Ecological Questions 35(2024)1. https://doi.org/10.12775/EQ.2024.009

    • This paper is BIG, but a little complex. It is also discussed in one of my two big webinar videos. The primary issue addressed here is that information requires two information cycles. The first is for the production and reproduction of the information product, the book, the play, the news report, etc. The second is the information required for the production and reproduction of the ‘expression mechanism’ (I called it), the information required to produce, publish, and market a book, to stage and market a theater play, to produce a news story, etc. These also require ‘information’, valuable information that must also be maintained against Second Law degradation. Right? Most people don’t think of this second essential body of information. They think only of the law, ritual, book, play, etc. For this paper I used a different information cycle format from Odum that I really like, the ‘structural life cycles’ version.

  • TBD Culture in Cycles. Book ms.

    • This will bring it all together.