Infostates

2020 - ongoing All organisms generate information. They also receive it through receptors and/or senses. Information describes the state in which we and our environment are. With it, we make decisions. Almost every cell in my body contains nearly 3 metres of DNA - a recipe for living and co-existing with the world. How much information do I need to function in the world? The basis of my professional work is to sift through the information contained in the DNA of the organisms I study. During my breaks at work, I scroll through endless walls of different websites to keep up to date with world events. In the evenings I read books about people living in the same world, but in completely different infostates. About those who, without sufficient data, make disastrous decisions, have a distorted view of reality or, finally, influence others by taking away their access to information for their own profit. I read about people lost in the chaos of information and about those who happily decide not to look for it. This project is an attempt to explore my attitude towards a world flooded with information of often questionable quality and content. It was created out of a desire to understand my own and other people's infostates. But it is also a foreground to ask myself fundamental questions. How do I find balance in a space driven by information? How do I know? How 'hollow' is my view of the world? Am I losing anything because I don't know? Do I gain something because I know?

Search phrase:
how to extract DNA at home - 46 000 000 results (0.46 s) as of 4.12.2021
It would take 160 days to read one word in each search result, assuming that the average adult reads at least 200 words per minute for 24 hours a day.
Near the surface of the liquid is my unpurified DNA isolated from squamous cells of the epithelium lining the mouth. The material was isolated at home based on a DIY protocol from one of the 46,000,000 searches found in an internet browser using a mobile phone.




Search phrase:
formation of a human being - 6 860 000 000 results (0.77 s) as of 4.12.2021
'The image of the world is formed slowly and depends on the individual's experiences and the conditions under which his or her development takes place. Gradually, a system of beliefs is formed that determines the attitude to the world, the so-called world view.
The world view is an internal system of deep beliefs, which confesses the individual's attitude towards the world and himself. The world view manifests itself in the way of understanding and interpreting various manifestations of reality. An individual's adoption of beliefs and views is closely related to the cultural environment, educational influences and individual experience.'
Translated from a high school textbook Aue, W. (2007). Człowiek jako jednostka: podręcznik: liceum o profilu socjalnym






Search phrase:
Filter bubble - 1 810 000 000 results (0,71 s) as for 4.12.2021
“A world constructed from the familiar is a world in which there's nothing to learn ... (since there is) invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas.
— Eli Pariser in The Economist, 2011[34]
Many people are unaware that filter bubbles even exist. This can be seen in an article on The Guardian, which mentioned the fact that "more than 60% of Facebook users are entirely unaware of any curation on Facebook at all, believing instead that every single story from their friends and followed pages appeared in their news feed."[35] A brief explanation for how Facebook decides what goes on a user's news feed is through an algorithm which takes into account "how you have interacted with similar posts in the past."[35]”
A fragment of Wikipedia entry on filter bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble, access 04.12.2021




Search phrase:
how much data is generated every day? - 5 860 000 000 results (0,61s) as of 4.12.2021
‘Big data represent a recent phenomenon born in the digital era to which everybody contributes. This has resulted in the production of an increasing amount of information that is ineradicable and piles up permanently and indefinitely in the virtual world. A quick glance at this phenomenon reveals that human beings are currently producing more data every 2 days than all the data collected since the origin of humanity right up to the year 2000 (about 90% of all data in the world were generated in the last 2 years).’
Have H., Patrão Neves M. (2021) Big Data. In: Dictionary of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54161-3_74




Search phrase:
censorship - 1 840 000 000 reasults (0,54 s) as of 4.12.2021
'Censorship no longer works by hiding information from you; censorship works by flooding you with immense amounts of misinformation, of irrelevant information, of funny cat videos, until you're just unable to focus.'
Yuval Noah Harari




Search phrase:
lack of information - 2 470 000 000  (0,48 s) as of 4.12.2021
‘Light not only drives photosynthesis to produce sugars but is also one of the most reliable abiotic cues that inform plants about their surrounding environment. (...) Light-regulated development responses, also regarded as plant photomorphogenesis, include seed germination, photoperiodic flowering, shade avoidance and phototropism (Chen et al., 2004; Franklin and Quail, 2010). Light perception is also vital to adjust the circadian clock, allowing the synchronization of plant growth and metabolism with the daily light/dark cycle (Sanchez et al., 2020).’*
Plants devoid of this crucial information about their surroundings look differently. Their leaves and branches are pale and they do not perform their normal functions.
*Lopes-Oliveira, P. J., Oliveira, H. C., Kolbert, Z., & Freschi, L. (2021). The light and dark sides of nitric oxide: multifaceted roles of nitric oxide in plant responses to light.




Search phrase:
quality of information - 15 760 000 000 results (0,62 s) as of 4.12.2021
‘There are essentially 10 qualities of good information:
It must be relevant
It must also be clear
There must be sufficient accuracy
The information must be complete
The information must also be trustworthy
It must be concise
Information must be provided in a timely manner
It must be communicated to the right person
It must also be communicated via the right channel
Information must be less costly than the value it provides’




Searched phrase:
source of information - 6 480 000 000 results (0,55 s) as of 4.12.2021




Search phrase
limits of senses - 12 320 000 000 results (0,46 s) as of 4.12.2021
'What you can sense of the world around you is limited by of a very narrow band of what is possible. Because of this, your perception of reality is biased by these limitations of what you can sense. Some animals or insects perceive a world that is often very different than what we can see or hear.'
Quote source: https://www.school-for-champions.com/senses/limits.htm




Search phrase:
alternative sources of information - 14 530 000 000 results (0,40 s) as of 04.12.2021




Searched phrase: 
How realistic is my vision of the world? - 6 760 000 000 results (0,56 s) as of 4.12.2021 
‘Non-realists fail to make a distinction between the world and our knowledge of it, and so end up imagining either that the discourses or types of knowledge are simple reflections of it (positivism), or that conversely the world is a product of our knowledge (idealism). Both these views make it difficult to see how knowledge can be fallible. For realists, the fallibility of knowledge suggests that the world is not just whatever we care to imagine. When we make mistakes, are surprised by events, or crash into things, we sense the ‘otherness’ of the world, its independence from our ideas about it. The implications of this are double-edged: on the one hand, this otherness or independence of the world implies that the task of developing ideas that can make sense of it is going to be inherently difficult; on the other hand, the very fact that we can often realize when we have got things wrong, through getting some negative feedback from the world, implies that distinguishing among the various properties of the world is not impossible.The very fact that we can successfully do so many things through our practical interventions in the world suggests that the knowledge informing those interventions has at least some ‘practical adequacy’. The flat earth theory was quite practically adequate for many activities, even though we might want to say now that it was untrue. The round earth theory is more practically adequate than this, enabling us to do new things like putting satellites into orbit, but it’s not perfect (the world seems not to be perfectly spherical).’ 
Sayer, A. (2006). Realism as a basis for knowing the world. Approaches to Human Geography: Philosophies, Theories, People and Practices, 106-116.




The majority of this project came into being during the 10th edition of Sputnik Photos Mentoring Programme (2020-2021) under a supervision of Agnieszka Rayss and help from other members of Sputnik Photos Collective.