UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION AND ITS ROLE AS A TOOL: IN MEMORY OF MARK BURGIN

This book is a collection of works related to information contributed by multiple authors dedicated to the memory of Mark Burgin who passed away on February 18, 2023. Mark Burgin had a very wide range of research and philosophical interests which has a reflection in the very broad subject range of the contributions to this book honoring his memory as an outstanding member of the academic community. The book Understanding Information and Its Role as a Tool: In Memory of Mark Burgin has two parts which have self-explanatory titles classifying submissions into two categories. One of them is "Understanding Information: Theory and Foundations" and the other "Information Realm: Information as a Tool for Exploring Reality". The former is intended as an inquiry of the concept of information itself, the latter as an inquiry of the use of the concept of information as a methodological tool for diverse forms of inquiries. The book was originally planned together with Mark Burgin and only after his passing was transformed by its present editors into his memorial. It was intended as a means to promote and disseminate the results of the ongoing research on information stimulated, initiated, or influenced by the 2021 IS4SI Summit. In the present form it goes way beyond its original design to focus on the most recent developments in the fields of information study.

Marcin J Schroeder, PhD has been a member of the academic community for almost 50 years as a faculty of several universities in Poland, USA, and Japan active in several disciplines of study from Theoretical Physics, Mathematics (General Algebra), Logic, to Philosophy, Intercultural Communication, Education, and Cultural Studies. In recent decades, the focus of his academic activity has been on philosophy and mathematical modelling of information, its dynamics (computation), and its integration (including its role in consciousness) with a special emphasis on the use of the general concept of symmetry. For many years, in addition to teaching in several universities he held administrative faculty positions of a Chair of Department, Dean of Academic Affairs, Director of Academic Center for Learning Excellence, etc. For his contributions to the establishing and development of the Akita International University in Akita, Japan he was awarded the honorary title of Professor Emeritus. Since 2015 he is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophies published by MDPI. Recently, he became Series Co-Editor of the World Scientific Series in Information Studies. He was the President of the International Society for the Study of Information (IS4SI) in the years 2019–2021 and has been a member of the IS4SI Board since 2017, currently as the Vice-President for Research. Since 2022 he is the Academic President of the International Society for Interdisciplinary Studies of Symmetry (SIS). In addition to presenting and publishing the results of his research, editing multiple research publication initiatives, he is frequently engaged in the organization and chairing of academic conferences.

Wolfgang Hofkirchner, PhD in 1981, Research Fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna until 1990, Assistant Professor and in 2001 Associate Professor for Technology Assessment at TU Wien, Austria, retired in 2018, University Professor for Internet and Society at the Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg from 2004–2010. Visiting professorships in Brazil, Spain and Catalonia. Founder of the Unified Theory of Information Research Group in 2003 that is nowadays integrated into the Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society (GSIS), President of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science 2004–2018, Founding President of the International Society for the Study of Information (IS4SI). Co-chair of the Emergent Systems, Information and Society Working Group of the Leibniz Society of Scholars at Berlin, Germany. Member of the International Academy of Systems and Cybernetic Sciences, Brussels, Fellow of the International Academy of Information Studies and Distinguished Researcher at the International Center for Philosophy of Information in Xi'an, China. Expertise in Complexity Thinking, Science of Information, and ICTs and Society. More than 260 publications, including the two linked monographs on a paradigm shift that allows all sciences to contribute to the transformations necessary to ensure the continuation of human life, Emergent Information: A Unified Theory of Information Framework (2013, Chinese edition 2020) and The Logic of the Third: A Paradigm Shift to a Shared Future for Humanity (2023).