6. Updates (en)
On BITrum’s 10th anniversary we are willing to contribute to the building up of a global sustainable information society
Versión española  It was indeed 10 years ago when we roll up our sleeves and get down to work on casting light on the general study of information. We then met around the intention of preserving the very diverse perspectives present in the study of information, with special emphasis on adequately addressing semantic and pragmatic issues and, to the extent possible, developing unified views. With that purpose, 10 years ago we were devoted to compose the first version of the glossariumBITri, while finishing that special issue of TripleC gathered under the epigraph "What is really information?". In this issue, we offered a refined version of the almost homonymous proceeding of the congress that met us in León in 2008 and which we sealed with the manifesto in which we declared our commitment.1 This manifesto is still available on the BITrum portal, as well as the glass stained window next to which we signed it, which has been a hallmark of the group, starting with its very name. Throughout these years, the experience has been diversified at times, recovering the original pulse in others. Diversification has shown the many activities carried out within the framework of the PRIMER initiative (aimed at the promotion of interdisciplinary methodologies), such as summer courses and educational programs, whose latest proposal is currently under evaluation at the European Commission desks. Regarding the maintenance of the original pulse, there is no need to find far away, the international glossaLAB project we are currently starting provides a sound continuity to several previous projects and before all our glossariumBITri (related update). As for the participation of the extensive group that has contributed to the development of BITrum (the adherents from the beginning and those that have been adding up) there have been stages in which we have reached all, and others in which a few (within the board) have seen forced to concentrate on taking forward the efforts that we had started and the commitments acquired along the way. This concentrated work has often prevented us, much to our regret, from maintaining the channels of communication and cooperation that would have facilitated broader participation, as we have always desired. Now, we have the opportunity to take up the pulse both through the glossaLAB project and through the congress in Madrid in which we want to celebrate the 10th anniversary of BITrum. We are very pleased to invite you to this event in which wish sharing a toast for what we have already walked and for the avenue opened in front of us which we wish walking along with you. We leave here the call for contributions (JCR indexed), which in addition to the volume of proceedings, whose deadline finishes this week, there are other publication pathways (JCR indexed), among others those foreseen for a workshop, integrated in the congress and devoted to the integration of knowledge in the line we opened 10 years ago with the glossariumBITri. Shortly we will circulate more information about it, but, from now on, write down in the agenda these dates in which we would like nothing more than counting with your participation. See you soon!  ___________________ (1) The proceedings were published in 2008 in bilingual edition under the title “What is information?”. Cf. Proceedings in BITrum’s contribution blog; Compiled edition of the special issue published in TripleC in 2009: compiled version in BITrum’s contribution blog. |
Co-creating knowledge in educational contexts: glossaLAB.edu project
 The project contemplates, both in the previous project and in the current one, the contribution to the conceptual clarification system based on interdisciplinary glossaries, at the different levels of development previewed in glossaLAB project: (i) Technical level (development of the platform); (ii) theoretical level (conceptual clarification in itself); (iii) Metatheoretical level(evaluation of the results of conceptual clarification, in terms of the integration of the knowledge acquired); and (iv) Organizational level (development of the management system for the interdisciplinary activity of autonomous teams, based on the model of cyber-subsidiarity). However, levels (i) and (ii) are the most important in educational contexts.1 ___________ (1) In any case, in 2018 relevant meta-theoretical results were published, applied to the development of soft skills in educational contexts, which have contributed to the development of the knowledge integration analysis methodology proposed in the glossaLAB and glossaLAB.edu projects. Cf. GUTIÉRREZ, E.; DÍAZ NAFRÍA, J.M. (2018). Ubiquitous learning ecologies for a critical cybercitizenship. [Ecologías de aprendizaje ubicuo para la ciberciudadanía crítica]. Comunicar, 54: 49-58. https://doi.org/10.3916/C54-2018-05 (BITrum's contributions blog). |
Continuing the path opened by the glossariumBITri: glossaLAB project
 Objetives glossaLAB generally aims to develop, within the two years of project lifetime, an interactive and open platform for conceptual elucidation and its application to the interdisciplinary co-creation, learning and dissemination of knowledge that supports interdisciplinary frameworks (in particular the general study of systems and information). This development involves activity at several levels: at the technical level, the development of an open platform that allows the re-compilation of valuable scattered encyclopaedic contents, in order that these are semantically interoperable, as well as tools that allow content analysis, as well as the visualization and semantic navigation. At the theoretical level, it is pursued an increase in "intensional" performance (reduction of conceptual redundancy) and the elucidation of concepts, theoretical frameworks and problems not considered in the original knowledge base. At the meta-theoretical level, the evaluation of the integration of knowledge based on diversity and the integration of the conceptual network. GlossaLAB gives continuity to the interactive-glossariumBITri with advanced functionalities, as an integral part of the glossariumBITri multimodal publishing system (partially developed under the glossariumBITri-UPSE project, 2017-2018), the International Encyclopaedia of Systems and Cybernetics (directed by Charles François) and the Principia Cybernetica (directed by F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn and V. Turchin). The highest level of knowledge integration corresponds to the Encyclopaedia of Systems Science and Cybernetics Online that will host the contents of the 3 mentioned resources. It will also serve as a basis for the development of other interdisciplinary glossaries as a theoretical-methodological tool for the integration of knowledge and the evaluation of the results of scientific integration (as foreseen in PRIMER initiative). Consortium GlossaLAB’s consortium comprises 3 Ecuadorian universities (the aforementioned Santa Elena Peninsula State University, the Salesiana Polytechnic University and the Yachay-Tech University), 3 Spanish universities (Madrid Open University, that will carry out a technical coordination of the project, Universidad de León and Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and 3 research entities (BITrum-Research Group, Spain, the Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society-GSIS of Austria, and the International Society for the Study of Information-IS4SI, Austria). ___________________ (1) DÍAZ-NAFRÍA, J.M.; BURGIN, M.; RODRÍGUEZ-BRAVO, B. (2019). Evaluation of Knowledge Integration through Knowledge Structures and Conceptual Networks. In G. Dodig-Crnkovic, M. Burgin (eds.), Philosophy and Methodology of Information, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. (BITrum's contributions blog)
(2) A Network Theoretical Approach to Assess Knowledge Integration in Information Studies. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 94: 360-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-78605-6_31(BITrum's contributions blog) |
The International Society for Information Studies (IS4SI) convenes a great melting pot on information research where glossariumBITri will serve as weaving device
 Since its constitution, the International Society for Information Studies (IS4SI) organises a biennial summit that gathers researchers from all over the world within information studies and related fields, associating in one single event different international conferences related by their interdisciplinary perspectives. The summit was previously held in Vienna 2015 (where BITrum-RG organised a Symposium and its General Assembly, see BITrum new 19/01/2015) and is planned to be convened in the University of California, Berkeley, in 2019. Their predecessors were the conferences held in Beijing in 2010 where the foundations of the Society were built (see BITrum update from 2010/10/20), and Moscow in 2013 (s. BITrum update 2012/09/12). IS4SI 2017 brings under the same roof four conferences previously held separately:
These conferences, and a number of other parallel and consecutive scientific events are assembled in IS4SI 2017 Summit under the umbrella theme DIGITALISATION FOR A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY: Embodied, Embedded, Networked, Empowered through Information, Computation & Cognition!. The summit will provide a meeting place for researchers from academia and industry, educators, societal stakeholders and others from a broad range of communities to build connections between fundamental scientific questions and the most urgent human aspects of digitalization, seen from an interdisciplinary informational perspective. Besides the four aforementioned major conferences, the summit will feature:
 glossariumBITri as a tool to weave strands
The glossariumBITri, which is now going through a vigorous transformation, will be used in IS4SI Summit Gothenburg 2017 as a way to weave the strands of the many different (and somehow scattering) matters dealt with in the Summit. The glossariumBITri (gB) will aim to clarify the different concepts used in the Summit as a kind of transversal tool within the Summit. Under its new development phase, the system is intended to serve as a retrieval resource and assessment tool (using semantic network analysis) to determine the achievements in knowledge integration.
On the one hand, the glossariumBITri will provide IS4SI Summit with a tool to weave its parts, increasing the possibilities to achieve synergetic results; on the other, the summit offers the clarification project, in which BITrum Research Group has been engaged since its origins, with the possibility to make a significant leap forward. The roots of this endeavour has been established in the joint partnership established among BITrum-RG, the National University of Santa Elena (Ecuador) and the Bertalanffy Center (Vienna).
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Presentation of glossariumBITri book edition and multimodal publishing system
 After a long navigation, the second book edition is presented on Tuesday, August the 30th, at 18:00 (Ecuadorian time) in the auditorium of the Universidad Estatal Península de Santa Elena-UPSE (La Libertad university campus, Ecuador). The presentation also includes the endeavor, in which we are currently working to modernize the interactive system, as well as the scientific journal, now launched in virtue of the inter-institutional cooperation among BITrum, UPSE, Universidad Politécnica Salesiana and Yachay Tech. The three components: gB-interactive, gB-journal and gB-book, are now entangled in a multimodal publishing system through which we expect to achieve the objectives of developing a fruitful and novel approach to investigating the thousand faces of information, as we started in 2008. Now we are standing on firm foundations and, since the object of study undoubtedly cross all the sciences, we hope that it will be a place where many of us meet in the arduous task of understanding the complexity of our surrounding world. To this end it is obvious we need many lights. Nevertheless, we count on the guiding thread of "information" as to weave endeavors. We hope you can join us! |
The Ecuadorian Public University of Santa Elena (UPSE) in cooperation with BITrum publishes the 2nd glossariumBITri book edition
 The cooperation was agreed within a partnership framework between both entities envisaging actions related to the development of interdisciplinary studies of information. Indeed such development is included in the project supported by the Ecuadorian postdoctoral research programme PROMETEO entrusted to our colleague J.M. Díaz Nafría. Among the joint activities the development of the scientific journal glossariumBITri (gB) is also included. It will be linked to the interactive-gB for a periodical extraction of the contributions of higher quality aiming to increase impacts. The electronic book edition can be accessed from BITrum-contributions repository: here. |
GlossariumBITri's Evolution in 2013
The impact of glossariumBITri grows steadily since its 2010 publication
Concerning the geographical origin of visits, they mainly come from the American continent, specially iberoamerican countries, with about 24 % of visits from Mexico, 14 % from Colombia, 13 % from Spain, etc. From non-spanish speaking countries, we highlight 3.3 % of visits from USA, 1 % from India, 0.8 % from the UK or 0.5 % from Germany.  |
The Glossary is being enriched with further articles on information from transdisciplinar perspectives
 Among the recently uploaded articles you may find: (1) Søren Brier's proposal at the confluence between cybernetics and semantics; (2) the General Theory of Information (GTI) offered by Mark Burgin as a powerful formal tool to unify distinct formal approaches to information; (3) physical aspects of information studied by Igor Gurevich in terms of heterogeneity; and (4) within the field of algorithmic information theory and complexity, in which Mark Burgin has worked out an enlightening clarification in a field where he has a thorough expertise, started in his early collaboration with Kolmogorov in the 1980s. In particular, the following are new entries in the glossariumBITri:
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The first book edition of the glossarium BITri is published in the second anniversary of BITrum
 The edition comprises: an introductory section clarifying the work scope and methodology, the structure of the articles and the symbology used; a concise description of the editorial team; the compilation of all edited and reviewed articles in two sections: Spanish articles, and English ones; and indexes. This book and the glossary as a whole is indebted to the work of all members of the editorial team (correctors, editors, authors, coordinators) and also to the support given by the Universidad de León and Caja España. The date in which the book was finished, November the 8th, coincides with the second aniversary of the foundation of the BITrum group. Therefore this publication brings about the oportunity to celebrate these two years of scientific voyage. Congratulations and best wishes for the rest of the journey! |
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