Information in the Study of Human Interaction

This chapter describes one way that information - as a conceptual entity - may be used (by an analyst, as a tool) in a study of human interaction. (Actually, most of what we say will apply to interaction in general, for instance human- machine interaction, but our examples will be taken from human interaction.) The "analyst" here may be a professional social scientist (as is the case for our main technical example), or could be an ordinary person trying to make sense of a particular interaction. When applied to such latter cases, our article also provides insight into much of the common talk about "information" that takes place in today's "information society", and in that way our essay can be viewed as an analysis of the rational structure that lies behind (and is implicit in) the modern, information-oriented view of the world.