Building with/on Howard T. Odum’s theory of information

Abstract

Over a long and renowned career, HT Odum assembled an original body of ecological and energy systems science. Perhaps less well known are his ideas about information. Beginning in an era of information theory and cybernetics, Odum built upon and moved away from many of the trends in information, linking biodiversity and culture to his energy systems principles of maximum empower and hierarchy. What emerged was a unique understanding of what information IS and what it DOES. The first goal of this paper is to piece together Odum’s theory of information from his many writings. The second goal is to attempt to build on this body of ideas to extend its reach, and to build with his ideas in new directions, but in directions that he would recognize to be in his energy systems science tradition. The result will be two proposed corollaries to his Fifth Energy Law, a Hierarchy of Cultural Information, and a Hierarchy of Manufactured Objects.

KEYWORDS:

• Information
• emergy
• hierarchy
• maximum empower
• information cycles
• culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Odum fully understood the information theory of his day, as evidence especially by his chapter on complexity, information, and order in Systems Ecology (Odum 1983, 302ff). The same can be said about the uses of information theory in ecology, specifically in the development of diversity indices (Odum 1983, 343).

2 Also known as the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics.

3 These books followed in a distinguished tradition of popular science publications that included Hutchinson (1965); Schrodinger (1944); Wiener (1954, 1964), and others.

4 “Information is defined here as ‘the configurations of the parts of a system.’ Information is in the real operating system, but it can also be separated out from the system as an isolated plan … When systems emerge through evolution and self-organization, the designs that maximize power can be separated from their system as coded information” (Odum 1995, 321).

“Information is the components, configurations, and programmed sequences of functional systems that is sustained by extracting, copying, and reapplication of operations” (Odum 2007, 224).

“Using traditional concepts, information was defined as the components and configuration of a system (real or imagined)” (Odum 1999a, 237).

“Here information is defined as the parts and relationships of something that take less resources to copy than to generate anew” (Odum 2007, 87).

5 Ecosystem configurations are commonly quantified with diversity indices, which began with the work of Shannon. Odum is acquainted with many, here in Systems Ecology is a table of twelve, (Odum 1983, 343). While he adopted this “configurations” view of information, he had reservations, as will be discussed in the text.

6 Radio example (Odum 1987, 44; 1999a, 237; 2007, 88, 224).

7 For Odum, a basic feature of human society could be called “the occupations analogy”, “Human occupations are analogous to the species of an ecosystem. Both refer to the specialities by which a system’s work is accomplished” (Odum and Odum 2001, 24). Odum frequently makes use of this analogy (Odum 1999a, 263; 2007, 150–151). Formally stated, Species: Ecosystems : Occupations : Human society. Species are to ecosystems, as occupations are to contemporary human societies. Of course, human society contains other “units”, e.g. individuals, families, kin groups, corporations, nations, etc. But, for Odum, occupations are the smallest distinctive functional units or roles in an economy, just as species represent functional roles in an ecosystem. Also, occupation titles, like species names, are labels for populations of individual organisms. For Odum, a configuration of occupations can also be aggregated into a series or scales formed by the level of education required in each (Figure 2).

8 “The useful information of operational ecosystems and economic systems is tied to the real operation. However, the plan of the system’s arrangements can be extracted from its operational system and written on paper, on a computer disk, or in coded genes. The isolated information may be miniaturized in small spaces such as brains, computer chips, and memory disks that facilitate copying, sharing, dispersal, and feedback control actions. The extracted information may be in a dormant, unused form, stored in a book, but the information can be reapplied to configure and operate a system again” (Odum 1988, 1137).

9 An ecosystem configuration or “set of species” may be extracted and used to reproduce a system, as when “representatives of these species are isolated from [their] system, as we observe in botanical gardens and zoos. The ecosystem can be restored to that same environmental condition by recombining the set of species and allowing self-organization to develop” (Odum 1999a, 237).

10 “Large-scale patterns of society reproduce and maintain their information with education one generation after another, a process of copying and selecting” (Odum 2007, 225).

“Information is the essence of relationships stored in compact form which may be used to configure much larger components. When functional information is extracted, it has utility when it is fed back to control and organize a system of parts again” (Odum 1987, 44).

11 “When isolated in compact form, information requires some form of energy as a carrier, such as that in the DNA of seeds, the paper of books, the electromagnetic waves of radio transmission, or the neuroelectrical processes of the brain” (Odum 1996, 220).

“Information requires a carrier, either the operating system or the material of the extract such as the paper, seed, books, computer disk, sound waves, and mental structure. There is a small amount of available energy in all information (in the information carrier)” (Odum 1999a, 237).

“Information requires a carrier and the carrier has energy. It is not possible to separate information from a tiny bit of energy. The configurations of letters in books, messages on telephone, computer memories are all dependent on what is used to carry or store them” (Odum 1987, 45).

“Information cannot be stored without some carrier, paper, computer disks, human minds, geologic materials, etc. Since anything that can store information has to be different from its surroundings, the carrier of information possesses some concentration difference and may depreciate, especially when their carrier depreciates” (Odum 1987, 45).

12 “What makes information configurations different from other storages is that: Information is something more easily copied than regenerated anew” (Odum 1999a, 237).

13 “After information has been copied, it may be shared. The same information then has a larger territory, a greater area of influence, and a slower depreciation rate. Considerable additional work must be done to develop the shared status … The shared genetic information in the populations of birds and plants has broad territories due to bird movements and seed dispersals. Information shared by a species has a larger territory than the individual organisms” (Odum 1987, 46–47).

14 “Shared information covers larger areas and has larger areas of influence. In the aggregate, it lasts longer (turnover time of shared information is longer), has larger territory, and greater influence” (Odum 1987, 47).

15 “The development of specific behavioral and chemical means for keeping the species functions separate constitutes insulation of the circuits and is expensive in work drains on the available energy budget. If insulating mechanisms are absent, energies are lost through leaks between circuits. The energy reinforcement for developing species-insulating mechanism is greater when networks are complex” (Odum 2007, 240).

16 “The log-of-possibilities measure gives the same value to useful information that has been selected through reinforcement during self-organization to operate systems as it does to useless complexity that will not operate anything” (Odum 1996, 237). Also similarly stated in Odum (1987, 79).

17 “Widely used in ecology is the Shannon-Weaver-Weiner diversity index, which calculates the bits per individual of a set of units or pathways. For species, values range from less than 1–7 bits per individual in some rainforests. The emergy per bit for small units such as microbes is much smaller than that for large units such as trees, even though the number of bits per individual are the same” (Odum 1996, 239–240).

18 While this was Wiener’s opinion, the situation today is more complex, for instance in physiology, as positive feedback effects the generation of periodic pulses in nerve transmission, pacemakers that control the respiratory center or heartbeat, or physiological expulsion processes, such as childbirth. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this correction.

19 Odum began experimenting with passive electrical analog simulations in the 1950s. He was one of the first to apply electronic simulation to ecological systems (Odum 1960). At the same time, Jay Forrester at MIT was developing techniques for computer simulation of industrial systems (Forrester 1961). Over time, both developed a diagramming language to describe their simulations. Both approaches became widely known, Forrester’s as system dynamics (SD), and Odum’s as the energy system language (ESL). Both migrated their simulation to minicomputers in the 1970s. In the 1970s, Odum directed a number of PhD and Masters students to produce complex simulations, e.g. Boynton (1975), included in Odum (1983, 538). In Systems Ecology he provides some direct comparisons with systems dynamics modelling, including a one-to-one comparison of symbols (Odum 1983, 86), and a number of model comparisons (Odum 1983, 87, 185, 393, 550) including a systems model of the well-known World Model of Forrester and Meadows (Odum 1983, 569).

20 The cybernetics revolution began with the concept of negative feedback. Many scientists of biology, psychology, neurophysiology, business organization, engineering, and others saw great promise in the concept. Forrester was one of them, and not surprisingly, his Systems Dynamics modeling software and diagramming language emphasizes feedback – negative, and also positive. Negative feedback was seen as key to neuron physiology and related learning behavior. Odum offered a strikingly different view of negative feedback. It is in fact difficult to find negative feedback in one of his systems diagrams or simulations, though it is present in nearly every diagram, wherever there is a concentration of energy or materials. Negative feedback is the dispersing outflow from a storage or concentration (Odum 1983, 179). A storage is built with work inflows. Negative feedback is a drain that slows or halts that growth by draining the storage at some rate, eventually balancing inflow with outflow. Thus, as negative feedback in other diagramming systems, it achieves stability or balance.

The reason for this contrasting view of negative feedback is fundamental to Odum’s theoretical understanding of energy systems. He gave negative feedback a much more marginal role within energy systems that are expected to capture energy and self-organize when energy sources are available. In energy systems models, energy is a forcing function that enters or creates a system. Within that system, positive feedback is an energy flow that interacts with energy inputs, capturing, directing, and amplifying their flow. Energy systems are created, animated, driven by concentrations of energy, which is a directional force from concentration to dissipation, per the Second Law. Therefore, his systems modeling is centered on energy sources, storages, and flows, and feedback control from storages is typically positive, amplifying feedback. Negative feedback, where it appears in his modeling, is primarily to limit or stabilize growth.

The adage, energy flows, and materials cycle is profoundly evident in every model. In a common pattern, energy sources from outside of the system window enter and interact with storages of materials within the window. Each interaction is an energy transformation processes, which results in the dissipation of energy flowing to a heat sink at the bottom of the window, and the production of new storages or flows of energy or material products. Dispersed excess materials recycle toward background concentrations where they may be captured and used again in the future. This model could be plant production, consumption, and recycle, it could be the organization of a city, it could describe a manufacturing process, or it could be the convergence of lead into wetlands.

21 Odum put it this way, “The geobiosphere builds and maintains structural storages with productive work … When inputs decrease, nonliving structures dissipate, and later if energy inputs are again available, self-organization has to start over. With information the products of self-organization carry over from one episode of growth to another, making life, progress, and evolution possible” (Odum 2007, 221).

22 Of diversity, Odum says, “Ecosystems package their biochemistry within the species, each one being different and each one occupying a different pathway of processing of materials and energy. The more diversity there is in the biochemistry, the more special abilities there are to generate products and mineralize wastes” (Odum 2007, 369).

23 “Apparently, humans evolved from earlier animal stages with a fundamentally greater ability to be reprogrammed by environmental conditions. This ability allowed humans to become the ecosystem’s computer program [today, the ecosystem’s AI], readily organized and programmed with behavior to feed back control, maximize power, and compete. The human species gradually moved along the energy-quality scale – to the right in energy diagrams [today, cultural evolution and its product is ‘cumulative culture’]. Humans became the main programming entities for new kinds of ecosystems such as systems of hunting and gathering, cattle grazing, and fishing given in this chapter. Emerging with the new ability to program were new mechanisms of controls, such as economic motivations [money closed-loop reinforcement], family [altruism, alloparenting], government [formal laws], and religion. The social structure and programs are called culture” (Odum 1983, 508).

24 In Environment, Power, and Society, Odum gives a number of examples of cultural control in the energetic organization of society. A law is a control pathway, often turning actions on or off (Odum 2007, 292). Money is a “loop reward selector” that provides immediate reward to people for their services provided to a process (Odum 2007, 255). Presented in Odum (2007, 295) are diagrams of control loops for different forms of government, simple, totalitarian, and democratic. As an example, imperial Rome is diagrammed with Roman legions controlling trade with force assuring grain deliveries to the Roman population (Odum 2007, 294). Symbols of Rome are shown feeding-back to reinforce the Legions. Finally, Odum presents a chapter on the role of religion in social control. Religion is understood to provide society with programs of learned behavior, a book of principles [social norms], for controlling, guiding, and motivating people, reinforcing their behavior with feelings of security (Odum 2007, 313). In a hierarchical control structure, religions need leaders and institutions to train and indoctrinate people with shared principles (Odum 2007, 316–317). Religion is seen to unite people for group protection and unified actions (Odum 2007, 314).

25 Here are some examples of Odum’s use of “operate”. Also, notice the prominent place of “operate systems” in Figure 1 in which the system is “operated” by the “shared information” in the storage above it. “More emergy is required to extract the information from the system it operates into a compact form suitable for transmission or transport” (Odum 1996, 223). “When a tree reproduces, the genetic information that operates the whole tree is extracted in the form of seed and transmitted for dispersal and reproduction” (Odum 1996, 223). “The information may be in an operating system, or extracted and stored in compact form in a plan or code” (Odum 1996, 220).

26 [In a systems diagram of nature and feedbacks from culture (Odum 1983, 508)], “notice that there are feedbacks of embodied high-quality energies in the form of amplifier actions, nutrient controls, selection, pulsing consumption, and many other controlling actions. Surviving systems are observed to have a good closed loop of service from the environmental components to humanity and humanity back to the landscape ecosystems. Survival probably requires closed-loop actions. Systems without the feedback services from humanity are drained compared to alternatives and are displaced”.

27 Within two pages, Odum restates this idea in several forms, “shared operational programs”, “learned programs of dedicated behavior”, “programs of learned human behavior”, and “set of programmed functions” (Odum 2007, 313–314). Related to the function of religion, it is most clearly stated here, “Religion consists of programs of learned human behavior shared with other people and taught in religious institutions controlled by religious leaders” (Odum 2007, 313). More references to programs and programming are in note 21, above. One more example is “programmed sequences” in Odum (2007, 224). The phrase “shared program” dates Odum’s writing. Today perhaps a better phrase would be “cultural models” (Holland and Quinn 1987).

28 I have located four instances where Odum uses the word “ideas”. In Environmental Accounting there is a simple reference, without explanation, “Centers of business information, religious symbols, and high-technology ideas increasingly have become the highest level of the hierarchy of urban civilization” (Odum 1996, 235). In Environment, Power, and Society, there is one instance related to learning that I will discuss shortly in the text (Odum 2007, 234–235), and in note 29. Later, in his discussion of religion, I find one reference to the contents of a shared “program of learned human behavior” in religion. Here Odum says that the program includes “ideas” in the sacred texts (my terminology) of the religion. He says, “Usually there is a book of principles, which has ideas or examples that seem to fit the many stages of society including growth, climax, and descent” (Odum 2007, 313). I find these to be significant. In these three sentences, there are probably more, Odum refers to information in the terminology that most of us find natural and logical. Information is “ideas” or meanings. The ideas are components of the learned programs of control. When I think of my information scales of conversation and social media, I typically envision the transmission of ideas. I think it is possible that Odum too envisions “ideas” as components of his shared programs, though he would usually rather refer to the larger unit of a “program” that operates as a unit of control.

29 The “pulsing paradigm” became the centerpiece of Odum’s understanding of the dynamics of systems, replacing an older “steady state” view that preceded it. “By now it is pretty universal as the view of environmental scientists for their various systems. See our papers on this starting in the 1980s [footnote]. It is a paradigm because it replaces the idea of growth followed by steady state sustainability” (Odum 1999a, 244–245).

30 Odum proposed one more version of the information cycle that he called the “structural life cycle” (Odum 2007, 229). This model has a number of significant and important differences that will not be explored here, but are the subject of a forthcoming paper, titled “Parallel Cycles” (Abel 2022b).

31 In discussion of science as an information cycle, Odum says, “It is the empirical choosing system that sets science apart from philosophy. Ideas by themselves that do not receive loop reinforcement from real measurement wander off into interesting but unreal patterns. Both working units are required: the idea generator and the chooser” (Odum 2007, 234).

32 See note 6 for discussion of the “occupations analogy”.

33 This model and diagram are typically used by the emergy community as a source of transformities for occupations. It provided a very rough estimate, based only on the education level necessary for the occupation, but for emergy analyses of contemporary economic activities, that level of precision is sufficient. One attempt has been made to calculate detailed transformities for occupations (Campbell, White, and Boggess 2013). That effort used Odum’s abbreviated model of learning that I will discuss shortly in the text.

34 The transformity of the product of an energy transformation process is the sum of the input emergies divided by the energy in the product. Units are solar emjoule per joule (sej/J). When the product is information, the energy is simply the energy of the “carrier” of the information, such as sound waves, electromagnetic signal, or the print and paper of a book. Transformities can be said to “locate” a process in the universal energy transformation hierarchy.

35 This concept occurs especially in Odum’s discussion of the function of information (what information DOES), “In religious society, copies of shared operational programs reside in each person so that individuals can all operate together for a common purpose” (Odum 2007, 313–314).

36 See the discussion of “shared programs” and “ideas” in note 26.

37 He says, “The information society is developing an analogous process in which the huge amount of information on the Internet seems to be society’s short-term memory. Heretofore, libraries and scholars have been society’s long-term memory” (Odum 2007, 243). From my point of view and the model of Figure 3, Odum is simply describing increasing scales of the nested hierarchy of cultural information. The “internet” (e.g. my “social media” scale) is producing information objects in rapid cycles and with short turnover times. His libraries of books produced by scholars refers to my “scientific research” scale, which produces books and journal articles as information objects with long turnover times produced in slow cycles. The “scientific research” scale has now been evaluated with emergy in Abel (2022a).

38 In Abel (2022a), this type of analysis is referred to as a “area” evaluation, in contrast to a “product” evaluation. “Area” analyses typically use an emergy input that is calculated for a large spatial region, such as an island or a nation, and they included people and information within their boundaries. “Product” analyses are typically a single instance of production from within a much smaller spatial scale, such as a farm or factory, and human and information are external inputs to the system. Information transformities are only produced in “area” analyses, as we see here in the “education attained” evaluation. Odum elsewhere also offers two similar “area” evaluations of human transformities based on total emergy flux, however in those cases the evaluation is even simpler. That is because the evaluations are for undifferentiated populations in small societies, one in indigenous New Guinea (Odum 1996, 235–236) and the other unnamed (Odum 1999a, 235). The point that makes these worthy of mention is that Odum’s approach is extremely straight-forward, using only one percentage value for each demonstration because the populations were undifferentiated, not divided by an education hierarchy. In the first example, he judged (somehow) that the information emergy carrier was only 10% of human metabolism energy, while in the second case he used 1%, which resulted in, admittedly rough, transformities for human information. Emergy researchers should always acknowledge that emergy evaluations are never precise. The point is to produce the best results possible and move on. With so many unevaluated processes in the world, it is best to make estimates that can contribute to others, some day to be improved.

39 This has been an issue of some importance to the emergy research community. Beginning with Meillaud, Gay, and Brown (2005), repeated efforts have been made to calculate or increment human transformities “from the bottom-up” by evaluating the formal education system and the students within, including an innovative “circulating student” methodology developed by Daniel E. Campbell and Lu (2014) and adopted by Almeida et al. (2013) and by Lupinacci and Bonilla (2018). In an earlier conference paper (Abel 2011), it was my proposal that calculating human transformities “from the bottom-up” would require inputs from many processes, not only formal education. These include the important inputs from households and families, and they include the experiences of people in their occupations. In addition, other “information” inputs besides education were included, such as inputs from law, religion, media, and others, which will be discussed later in this paper. With the terminology discussed in the previous footnote, “area” vs “product” emergy analyses, it is clear that both approaches are “product” analyses. In Abel (2022a) it is argued that transformities for information objects need to be calculated in “area” analyses because “information cycles” are populational phenomena that require selection among populations within an extended region. Odum’s top-down method should therefore be the chosen analysis form. It is conceivable that a similar “area” analysis of households could offer an alternative top-down approach.

40 I am using the term “useful” in Odum’s sense, “Since systems will not long continue energy transformations unless their products feed back to increase mutual coupling and maximum [em-]power, most work that is continued is useful, where useful means that the product or service is linked to other parts of the system so as to reinforce and increase system performance (maximum [em-]power principle)” (Odum 1987, 30).

41 The practice of searching for functional explanations of unusual cultural behavior has a long tradition in the social sciences, perhaps most vigorously pursued by the anthropologist Marvin Harris (Harris 1979). His research strategy of cultural materialism and infrastructural determinism emphasize the causality of energy, economy, environment, and population size, all variables that have determining influence in the maximum empower principle.

42 This is a nuanced topic. While gross energy production continues to rise due to the emergence of fracking technology in the US, with a low net emergy for all of unconventional oil production, especially fracking, and with growing world population, the net emergy per person is in decline. Which will maximum empower respond to? It could be that capitalism is losing its emergy support, leading to the expanding inequality that can be observed worldwide. Perhaps contraction is leading to decomposition in which a portion of every national economy continues to participate in global capitalist growth, while a “working class” portion is contracting. Finally, as of this date, October 2021, it appears that fracking has failed in the US (disingenuously portrayed as a US response to climate change), and political leaders are asking the oil states to pump more to avoid an oil crisis. It would seem that the march to peak oil has resumed, and that with increased pumping it may arrive sooner rather than later.

43 Here is what I said in 2014, “Science possesses characteristics of human and energy inputs, cycle time and space that result in elaborate constructions of knowledge, persistence, accessibility, and political-economic force that distinguish it. While a socially privileged information cycle with a Western history, it is the product of multitudinous cycling and perhaps millions of authors (most unknown, not the cryptic intellectual lineage we are taught in school), which has arguably produced remarkable characterizations of the world, resulting in innumerable new processes and manipulations that effect our lives, and that have come to support a global political-ecology of 7 billion people” (Abel 2014, 70).

44 The arrangement of this rightmost cluster of information forms is intended to be suggestive. It was produced from cursory estimates based on the five features listed in the text, turnover time, durability, territory, etc. It is not expected that any form currently dominates the others, but rather that these powerful communication forms are competing or negotiating for influence.

45 In Environmental Accounting, Odum states the principle simply as “Energy flows of the universe are organized in an energy transformation hierarchy” (Odum 1996, 16).

46 Energy transformation processes are connected to each other in a network or web. An example is an ecosystem food web, or trophic hierarchy, but in principle, all energy transformation processes are connected into a single network, Odum said, “All the energy transformations known can be connected in a series network according to the quantity of one kind of energy required for the next.” Odum proposed this universal hierarchical self-organization of energy systems as the fifth energy law (Odum 2007, 65).

47 Odum said, “Chains and webs are a form of system specialization that may be explained by maximum power selection. Although energy is dispersed in each energy transformation step, the system is benefited if the downstream consumer unit develops flows of special ability that feed back actions with as much or more energy amplifier action as energy was used in developing the feedback. The theory suggests that selection for maximum power generates energy transformation hierarchies. Since each energy transformation step requires utilization and dispersion of potential energy, the total energy flows decrease as one passes work from step to step. Conversely, the embodied energy per unit of actual energy [emergy] decreases down the chain” (1983, 269–270).

48 Odum said, “Because systems of energy flow develop hierarchical webs, large flows of low-quality energy are transformed into and support small flows of high-quality energy. These energy distributions can be represented on graphs called energy spectra in which quantity of energy flow is plotted as a function of energy quality” (Odum 1983, 269).

49 In proposing the Sixth Energy Law, he suggested that it could alternatively be labeled as a corollary of the energy hierarchy principle, his Fifth Law (2001a, 246). As I will be adding two other proposed laws, I would recommend calling them corollaries to the Fifth Law in order to preserve the importance or significance for other scientists of the foundational Fourth and Fifth Laws.

50 Odum offered other versions of the law. In 2007, the law was highlighted with italics, but not named as such, “Just as the quantity of concentrated energy has to decrease with scale, so does the quantity of concentrated materials, also because of the nature of the energy transformation hierarchy” (Odum 2007, 83). In 2001 he offered another version of the principle and did label it the Sixth Law, “Material cycles have hierarchical patterns measured by emergy/mass that determines its zone and pulse frequency in the energy hierarchy” (Odum 2001a, 246). In my opinion, proposing principles that include concepts that originate in his larger theoretical framework weakens the principle. Here he includes “emergy/mass” in his Sixth Law, and elsewhere he includes “transformity” in his Fifth Law Hierarchy Principle (Odum 1996, 16). For that reason, here in the text, I quote the Sixth Law from the 1999 paper.

51 Coupled is an important concept for Odum. “Most interactive intersections between pathways of energy flow involve work done by one flow on the other in various arrangements and functions. Such intersections are said to be coupled … Pathway intersections where one flow is doing work on another involve one pathway that exerts forces on the other and receives backforces from it. For work intersections, the nature of the flows is normally different” (Odum 1983, 124–125). Elsewhere he says, “To be coupled is to be joined to the action of energy sources” (Odum et al. 2000, 54). In discussion of the Sixth Law, “Materials are said to be coupled to the energy transformations” (Odum 1999b, 11), and if materials are of different kinds, they are coupled at different levels, “Materials of different kinds are found coupled with different levels of the energy hierarchy spectrum” (Odum 1999b, 14).

52 “Emergy per mass” is the regularly used UEV (unit emergy value) for materials, with explanation in Odum (1996, 35–52) and units of sej/g. Odum’s original conceptualization of embodied energy, or the energy of one type that generates a flow of another (Odum 1983, 16) was a “per energy” measure that gradually become known as “transformity” with units of sej/j (see note 32). Flows of energy, materials, and information were all conceived to have transformity values, which could “locate” them in the universal energy transformation hierarchy. The “energy” value (j) in transformities is the available potential energy of a concentration. For information, the concentration is of the information “carrier”, the substance or energy fields relative to the environment, examples are ink on a page, memory on a computer disk, or genes in a storage of DNA relative to the environment (Odum 1983, 19), which are available energy that tends to dispersal per the Second Law. For material flows, the available potential energy is in the concentration of a material in relation to earth background concentrations (Odum 1983, 18). Thus, it has always been possible to also calculate transformities for materials, though difficult. Recent research has greatly improved that situation (De Vilbiss and Brown 2015), computing potential energy values (exergy) for crustal mineral concentrations, and therefore transformities, which permit direct comparison to other flows of both energy and information, and which fits well with this discussion of the sixth law hierarchical concentration of materials.

53 Odum’s prose can be difficult. He leaves a lot unsaid, assuming perhaps that you know his referent, or that you can see the connections between the points he is making. That might be a natural problem for an author with such expansive knowledge. For the reader, it demands extra effort at times.

54 It should be acknowledged that Odum made his own comparison of the information cycle model to material cycles (Odum 2007, 89). In Figure 1, the “Make Copies” process is furthest to the right, the same location for the greatest convergence and concentrations of materials in the material cycle of Figure 6(a). Odum says, “An information circle resembles the mineral cycle somewhat. However, in a material cycle matter is conserved. In an information maintenance circle, the information is increased with copying and decreased with selections and depreciation, but a successful circle maintains enough copies to exceed depreciation and destruction rates” (Odum 2007, 89). In my opinion, this comparison is not well developed by Odum. He is attempting to address the cyclic nature of both information and materials. However, without the hierarchy of diverse cultural information forms, he does not have information objects that are analogous to the distinctly different chemical materials/minerals that compose the Earth.

55 Perhaps this is not as different as it seems. An ore body of some metal, for instance an ore of platinum formed in magmatic segregation in layers near the base of an igneous body along some plate boundary, can be conceived as an objectively distinct “object” from the dispersed platinum elsewhere in the crust.

56 Recall again Odum’s usage of the word, coupled in note 45.

57 These are the 10 most important minerals for the US economy (plus fossil fuels), as listed in De Vilbiss and Brown (2015).

58 I do not necessarily endorse Gardner’s psychological conceptualization, a “theory of multiple intelligences”. I find it highly appealing, but I have no wish to wade into debates over the incredibly politicized arguments about “intelligence”. Instead, I have adopted three of his eight physical/intellectual abilities that might relate to three of the human communication forms: linguistic-verbal, musical-rhythmic and harmonic, and bodily-kinesthetic.

59 One useful reason to come to this understanding is for emergy accounting. In emergy analyses of work processes, human labor is regularly seen as an emergy input. This might seem to violate a basic principle of emergy accounting, which is that emergy should not be added back into the processes that created it. The many economic and environmental processes “on the left” that support the creation of people might therefore not receive human labor inputs. However, if human labor is understood to be the information component of some cultural production process that has been extracted in miniaturized form in the memories of people, then the work of occupations is better seen as part of the cultural production process, not technically a flow from some other process “on the right”. Farming, manufacturing, etc. are information “coupled” to hardware. In systems diagrams it may seem that people are inputs to a system, but in fact they are an integral part of any cultural production process.

60 This was called the “occupations analogy” in note 6.

61 See discussion in note 37, above.

62 For this hierarchy, a fifth corollary might be proposed.