Friday 21 December 2007

Reductionist vs. holistic or side by side?

We have to break it apart and put it back again. We need to know what is made out of, how each little bit works, how it influences every other bit of the whole and how it is influenced by every bit of the whole. We do that with the knowledge that it works only if all is put back together again. Nothing is obsolete. Everything is needed no matter how inconspicuous, how insignificant it might appear to our senses, to our awareness, to our consciousness. It can only act as a whole.

And in the process we build our consciousness up.

Thursday 20 December 2007

Poverty? Why?

The whole theme of poverty reminds me of the development of a chaotic system, or any such system presumed as chaotic by any individual, evading awareness, baffling consciousness on the grounds of the enormous complexity ensued due to the increased multiplicity of agents in a system, to remind myself of John Holland. It is bound to appear chaotic because of the complexity arising.

When I come across in the internet of websites that experiment with Mandelbrot or Julia sets, their creators give you the opportunity to change the final image, by changing the range of a few parametres. The final image changes completely. The point is that, as the final image of a mathematical structure can be toggled by the change of a few parametres, the same goes for social systems too. These toggled up parametres change the final arrangement in the system. Parameters which for social systems represent the norms societies adhere by.

Toggle up the parametres norms and you get a different system. A big part of these parametres, being monetary parametres that have influenced and modified the accepted norms, sanctioned by society. And though you do not know how the system will develop, you can have an idea to where the system is going to.

Using indicators to assess where the system has gone after changing the parametres. Indicators such as crime, juvenile delinquency, or any other relevant criteria within the social 'space', in that particular instance.

How the whole system arrangement would change if one crucial parameter, like monetisation is replaced, or a drastic change to it, is introduced.

The whole deployment is complicated, need to be thought of, in every aspect but necessity demands to think primarily of the gross details of the thought. It is the guiding lines that matter foremost.

Wasted lives why?
Lost ... what for?

They are talking about poverty and already they assume it is inevitable. Why? It is all down to what has been accepted as a norm and think the concept of poverty in the context that creates.

What do you mean about norm?

A rule that is socially enforced. Social sanctioning is what distinguishes norms from other cultural products or social constructions such as meaning and values. Norms and normlessness are thought to affect a wide variety of aspects in human behaviour.

You can not prescribe how life events will unfold. Determine the outcome, before they even had the chance starting the process. It is predicting not determining the outcome. But what can be set is, to provide the path, the context within which, life events are expected to unfold. Individuals invest in life events, time, efforts, dedication, hope, their whole being might be drained in the process. At the end what matters, is the effect on what individuals have invested in an unfolding life event more than the life event itself. They might have achieved a goal but at what cost, what human cost.

The life event itself as it is prescribed by the norms should be secondary in importance, to the qualities participating individuals invest.

Why individuals accept their predicament so abstractedly?

Nothing can be enforced in a society if the individuals in that society are against it. No laws, no norms, no moral code can prevail if that norm, law, moral code is not emanating from within the individuals, has not got its source and inspiration out of the consciousness of the individuals.

That is how I wonder why individuals accept their predicament so fatalistically. Social norms can also be viewed as statements that regulate behavior and act as informal social controls. They are usually based on some degree of consensus and are enforced through social sanctions.

It is the frame out of all the possible frames that you can not escape from. This frame tells you what your position is and defines poverty status. Frames, social structures, they are defined by prevalent concepts about human activities.

The frame is responsible for the poverty status. If you change the frame you will alter the poverty status too.

What defines that frame? What defines the boundaries?

The combined activities of the human individuals.

What kind of boundaries you are talking about? A frame must have boundaries.

These are monetary boundaries defined by the needs of their participants and the incoming monies to satisfy these needs.

Wednesday 19 December 2007

Mental phenomena. Questions in need for an answer:

How could any real progress be achieved towards solving the mysteries of how mental phenomena fit in with the physical universe?

Do we need some important changes in our picture of physical reality?

A picture of physical reality that includes and explains mental phenomena.

Can physics provide a theory of consciousness?

Physical laws that describe the mental phenomenon of consciousness as a physical function.

Is quantum mechanics relevant to understanding consciousness?

Can we explain the mental phenomenon of consciousness as a result of quantum functions?

Can we imagine a theory in which "consciousness" finds some place within the purely physical descriptions of the world?

Is a self or "I" necessary for consciousness or can consciousness exist independently of selves?

If the mental phenomenon of consciousness is a physical phenomenon and we have explained it, we can then visualise how an act of consciousness can be performed without being associated with an "I", a self.

Do we need an expanded science which includes subjective experience to understand human consciousness?

Since subjective experience is the base of the mental phenomenon of consciousness, subjective experience should be the field that science should include in order to be able to provide an explanation of consciousness as a physical process.

What are the attributes of subjective experience that science can deal with?

Any investigation for any subject of knowledge starts by evoking on our subjective experience first, then we feel compelled to assume an objective stance to make sure that what we experience, is what others experience. To verify its occurrence, the reasons for its occurrence, to accumulate subjective reasonings and built a body of evidence, we behave showing a lack of faith on our own reasoning, our own subjective experience. We do not trust our own subjective experience and in the process we loose perspective. In order to become objective we forget our own subjective experience, to the point that we treat our own subjective experience as an illusion, and try to assimilate our subjective experience into a collective objective experience, the whole process becoming a statistical exercise.

Must a new science that we perhaps need, be so different from the science of today that the evoke and explain issues with regard to mentality may finally find natural explanations?.

Tuesday 11 December 2007

Western civilisation a travesty of darwinian laws

Darwinian laws taken to extremes that never in nature have appeared at all. In nature, survival, as it is practiced commonly, no tiger no lion or any other predator, puts aside or kills, whatever its own survival needs do not require. Humans do. In order to do that they surpass nature's simple laws. I wonder what weird concept of fittest this distorted exercise of darwinian laws try to prove?

Humanity has achieved its goal of survival. It has tamed and maimed nature in the process. Humanity as a whole can feed and nourish the entire earth's population. When you hear about famines and disasters you wonder why this is happening. You wonder why it is left upon charities to provide remedies, that amount to aspirins prescribed to treat a devastating disease, treat the symptoms and not the cause and instead eradicate the disease in its roots.

Sterile monetisation, that's what it is.

Wednesday 5 December 2007

A functional way to look at concepts and consciousness is fickle

What the mind understands (makes out) and what the brain sees are two different things. Allan Snyder gives a thorough approach.

"Our unconscious mind takes the flood of information and simplifies and categorises it into manageable and useful packages. Where it sees lines and patterns of dark and shade, our conscious mind might know it is a horse. We know that, because our brain has learned all about horses, has experienced what makes something a horse rather than a dog or a table, and has formed a concept and a mental image."

So a concept the package of all the lines and patterns of dark and shade accompanied with a mental image and a word. All that flow of information, the lines, the light, the motion; a rich bed of mathematical processes, the product of sophisticated mathematical operations to be reduced to a mere concept, a word and an image. And this process goes on myriads of times, in myriad individuals around the world.

What else I wonder has not been included in that tiny little bit of information that is conveyed to our consciousness? Why do we hold our consciousness to such high esteem? I see no reason.

Allan Snyder quotes

"it's a very efficient way for our minds to work".

How can it be efficient when a lot of information has been lost.

"It allows us to spot things quickly, to name them and communicate the ideas".

I could only imagine how it would have been if our consciousness could respond with the speed our brain records events around us.

But I do not need to imagine it. Allan Snyder's research focus on the extraordinary mental abilities of individuals with savant syndrome. Reports that

"savants experience only raw sensory information, and their precise drawings are a reflection of that. The reason most people can't draw like that is because of the way their minds extract meaning. Once the brain forms a concept, it inhibits the conscious mind from becoming aware of the details that created the concept in the first place. So instead of drawing what you see, you draw what you know".

Our consciousness manipulate the content of our experience. It does not let us reach a deeper level.

Consciousness is fickle. And whoever boasts about the thinking prowess, intelligence and rationality possessed within his skull is fickle too.

Consciousness misleads us. There is another level in our brain's infrastructure that is more efficient, that we can reach and we should draw our power from. Instead of going after frivolous trivial unworthy pursuits in our lives, we should strive to unleash that power within us. Let us put our consciousness down for a worthwhile task.

Thursday 29 November 2007

When Sally (J. Goerner) met the world(view).

The temptation was irresistible though it is my meeting with Sally's world(view) what is actually expressed in the title. Below is the abstract to her research paper "Today's Copernican flip: how putting collaborative learning at the hub of human evolution improves our chances of survival". Within it there are answers to questions which have lately been going on in my mind. Further exploration of her work is bound to lead me to new insights.

"Civilization is reinventing itself, much as it did 500 years ago in the shift from medieval to modern patterns of society. This time, the modern, mechanistic, imperialistic approach to life is failing and a new, collaborative learning species vision of humanity and ecosystem view of Global Integral Civilization is rising to take its place. Systems science stands at the heart of a new, integral stage of science that supports this new stage of civilization, not only with empirical and methodological detail, but also with a solid foundation for the new cultural and economic understandings. The result is a Copernican flip in our scientific view of the world and a new Enlightenment movement beginning to gather force throughout the world. Yet, though the ideas, the technologies, the ennobling inspiration and even the popular desire for this new era already exist, so far they remain diffuse and disjoint - obscured, suffocated and intimidated beneath the powerful pressures of business as usual. Today's challenge is to use the new scientific framework to build the intellectual clarity, common-cause unity and social infrastructure needed to achieve the next stage in human development by channelling these positive forces into a self-sustaining, actively learning whole."

Sunday 25 November 2007

Monetisation, the all-surpassing overriding directive in individuals' simplified models of reality.

Each individual attempts to deal with the stuff in the world in a problem solving scenario. Knowledge derived from previous experience assists to formulate and subsequently solve the problem based on mental structures past experience has built. The world is vast and only take notice of a limited amount of information presented. The capacity to assess a situation and provide solutions is small. It only allows an individual, a bounded rationality a concept attributed to Herbert A. Simon as it is mentioned in the Cognitive Structure Notes, website.

As a result

"the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it."

Therefore each individual goes along in life armed with a simplified model which uses to deal with problems encountered.

"He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behaviour is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world."

Whatever the letter or form of an individual's simplified model, there is a feature that deeply permeates and influences the solutions to problems the individual chooses, and this is monetisation. A feature incessantly promoted by states, governments, institutions, politicians, public and private organisations, a directive ruthlessly forced into the consciousness of each individual. Almost every human activity has to pass through the monetisation sieve. Principles, dignities, values, lives are looked primarily from the monetising perspective and accounted by it. Nothing escapes.

Therefore the simplified model an individual uses to deal with world issues, is heavily influenced by the monetisation principle. It is forced from above and against the will of the individual as the values held, are compromised to satisfy the monetising directives. It distorts choices and decisions made, forces to view life from a monetising perspective. A monetising drive that overrides almost everything else.

Saturday 24 November 2007

Short-lived? As opposed to long-lived ....

Just sprung into my mind and made me wonder. I felt I had to dig deep, in every nook and cranny of my brain, the deeper recesses of my mind, visited once or twice in a life-time and bring out whatever relevant mental structures, I have amassed during the course of my life.

Short-lived, like the goods we consume daily, what we eat and drink, the films we watch, the games we play, our times of passion and intimacy. Our looks.

As opposed to what? Long-lived? Long-lived in what sense? In regards with our lives, our body, our mind? What? Does long-lived span the entire length of our lives, or segments of our lives? Or spans out, our entire lives? Or even be out of time completely, in a realm where time does not exist. Timeless? There were always references to timeless in human history. One of them was the reference to ideas, concepts. Concepts and ideas that are not bounded by time. Timeless. And these I take must be long-lived.

And what else could long-lived be? Material? Of course not. Long-lived bear no relevance to material. Should be irrelevant of matter, as matter by itself is bound by time. Time makes material short-lived.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Consciousness and computing concepts

Going through notes which I scribbled down some years ago and titled them "New Ideas Laboratory". The following is an extract from an article by Stewart Hameroff.

"The main obstacle to realization of quantum computation is the problem of interfacing to the system (input, output) while also protecting the quantum state from environmental decoherence. If this problem can be overcome, then present day classical computers may evolve to quantum computers".

The interfacing of Hameroff's idea lit up a connection in my mind; interfaced, compelling me to explore its implications armed with whatever knowledge I possess now before I delve into his article. The word 'interfaced' I used, could it be the key? Is it an attempt to use my subjective experience of it, as it comes naturally within me? Interface what? What is an interface?

Taking ideas from the computing science field, their specific use of the interface concept: the two different kinds of programs, the client and the server. The client program wanting to instantiate objects served by the server and doing it so by the use of interfaces. Binary interfaces that both can understand, written in a language understood by both client and server programs. Each client and server programs evolved developed, making use of different languages of expression but nevertheless both built up from the same basic language, the binary, bits and zeros and the interfaces used are built from the same basic language so that the two kinds of programs can communicate with each other. Which means each individual client and server programs must have the ability, possess the proper functions to reach down to their basic levels and by doing so to establish a link, a handshake with the other program.

Can it be that our brain/mind uses the same principles? That our brain/mind being the client reaches down to its basic level language, the binaries of quantum computation, the same level that all reality exists and finds the interfaces which are available and gets connected with the various server programs that exist in nature, server programs that are responsible for the proper function of nature, natural phenomena, physical phenomena which we have understood and define with the laws of physics chemistry biology and so forth.

Which we need to look at them, examine them from another perspective, a perspective of language, programming language and define the language's code. Code that uses quantum computation at its basic level, define its 'bits and zeros' and therefore determine the nature of the interfaces that are used for client and server programs to communicate.

Who knows? We might be able to discover what consciousness is? Whether consciousness requires the 'I' to express itself? That the objects that client programs instantiate, in computing, via the interfaces by the server programs might be the same with the objects in the world?

Objects, being instantiated, in a similar way as in computing, as a result of client programs, executed by our brain/mind, via interfaces by server programs, executed by the physical universe.

Friday 28 September 2007

Internet, inventions dont matter as much as being in tune with others!!

What did draw my attention in this entry. Inventions don't matter as much as being in tune with others. Tune with others? So, the way I see it, as if the whole of the internet community 'broadcasts to a particular frequency'. The whole? Holistic? According to, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. And there is a 'frequency', readily interpreted as a range of activities classified according to how frequently they are exercised, the higher the abundance value carried, the more prevalent they become. Therefore one who enters into the internet community has to assimilate into the activities prevalent, and go with the flow.
'In tune' and tuning bring notions of waves, about frequency, wavelengths amplitude. In radio broadcasting you talk about carrier waves that propagate radio wave signals. The radio waves piggy-backed on top of carrier waves traverse the atmosphere. The radio waves carry the information signals what makes radio interesting, what makes the difference. The carriers in that particular instance being people and the frequency part refers to their activities. Inventions, are thought off in order to improve the activities.
Improving the activities. I think that these would matter. Why don't they? Is it because the framework, that hosts the named activities rigid and inflexible and can not stand the ripples inventions might bring about? Has the internet community reached that point in their development? That they provide the tune to which every one should sing, weeding out any potential opposition. The whole story of the links and the incessant blogging theme becoming prevalent in the posts, lead the whole internet enterprise into stagnant waters. Carrier waves in radio are plain, blank, there is no variety there, unlike the radio signals they carry. If the necessity arises they are replaced.

Has Internet reached such a state that can not stand the ripples inventions bring about? I do not think so. On the contrary, inventions are continuously brought in, changes are introduced. The prevalent 'frequencies' change, the 'carriers' that resist such trends are put aside and their activities cease.
I see that the 'in tune with others' trend described above, expresses a will exercised by people who do not want to loose their prevalent position for this or the other reason, so they adopt a reactionary role and suppress potentially innovative ideas that are out of sync with the frequencies-activities they profess. They 'cornered the market' and would not allow upstarts with fancy ideas to overthrow them. It is sad that such an innovative enterprise is overtaken by man's oldest sin. That of privilege.

Tuesday 25 September 2007

Chaotic explained

You are talking about emergence. Why chaos then. Chaos because when, even if a simple system unfold its mechanisms (game of chess), the states created are numerous, unable for a brain to comprehend, fathom, include at once. And becomes an even more formidable task when try to comprehend systems that are build out of mechanisms which by themselves are complex mechanisms, comprised of simpler mechanisms, and these in succession are by themselves complex and comprised by other simpler mechanisms and so on ... the combinations seem endless.
Our poor brain is helpless, can not cope. And to cap it up the world, our very own immediate environment for that part makes up the state spaces of many many systems, all with their own mechanisms unleashed to wreak havoc upon our poor senses and intellect, trying us hard, overwhelm our limited mental processing powers, bringing chaos in. All around us appear chaotic, unconnected, a ramble of states all competing hard to attract our attention.
But there is more to chaos than meets the eye as amidst it there is order underlying and once we accept that, we can see that chaos is not chaos at all, and what appears as chaos is the jumbling up of states, the constant re-arrangements, the cross-linking and breaking up of a system's mechanisms that has to take place so apparent order can finally emerge.
So what appears as chaotic is the transition from one ordered state to another, potentially emergent states, as the interactions between a system's multiple copies of the few allowed mechanisms, continue unabated, constantly re-arranging the geometry of the system, but always under the direction of the same simple rules, even at their most chaotic stages, that define the ordered emergent states.
How can it be chaotic if its development follows a path that is completely defined by the set of the few simple rules? There is order inherent in the rules, so chaos develops in an ordered fashion.

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Chaos analysis? Chaos tools?

Analyzing, breaking down an object into its bits, objects that represent states of the world and these can be many, are found everywhere, anywhere you care to look, on earth, on the land we live, the neighbourhood we stay, our home, our kitchen, our bedroom. It all depends on the focus of our attention.

What are these tools? How can we proceed with such a so-called analysis? Chaos analysis?

It looks, as this has to do with the mechanisms John Holland mentions in his book of emergence. In page 130 of his book, I read about mechanisms that:

- simpler mechanisms combine to yield a more complex mechanism
- the interaction of the mechanisms generates complex, organised behaviour
- the mechanisms allowed will be few in kind and simple to describe, enforcing the deletion of many details.

Meta-thought: Would that last property of the mechanism concept can be used to clarify situations-states under study? Can it be used to analyze a certain situation, the object, a chaos analysis? Be a chaos tool?

How? By identifying the mechanisms involved in the emergence of situation- state, the object; and define them, use this definition as guide and classify the clutter that is presented in front of you, to specific and non-specific items to the object studied, the "enforcing the deletion of many details" part of the concept's property.

What do you mean? When you observe a certain situation-state, an object, drawn out of the world, you have a mixed background, Erich Harth's penumbrae, outputs of many processes that belong to other systems.
Systems boundaries overlap therefore when you isolate a part of the world for study, the elements observed belong to more than one system. You have to identify the elements that make up the mechanisms of the system under study, draw the attention towards the object and discard the elements of mechanisms that belong to other systems.

Therefore defining the mechanisms (which are few in kind and simple to describe) will "enforce the deletion of many details", specifically the inputs, outputs and mechanisms of other systems, intruding branches of other objects, the non-systemic elements. This will make sure that only the system, and therefore the object under study is considered.

Wednesday 20 June 2007

Consciousness crumpled?

Stuart Hameroff builds up a case that dethrones consciousness from its pedestal. His exposition starts with a reference of how evoked potentials are triggered. As I could understand evoked potentials are the way sensory information is conveyed in the brain. But these potentials are too late, they occur 150 to 500 milli-sec after the stimulus. Whereas the actions that are the responses to the sensory information in the environment have either, already been initiated or even completed, namely within 100 milli-sec.
That tells me one thing, and one thing only. I do not need to think to go on living in this world. As most of these stimuli and their associated responses are what determine the course of our lives. In some cases they even determine whether we die or live. In other cases again determine between failure or success in our lives. So despite all these, we are drawn to a conclusion that denies our most cherished quality as human beings, to consciously determine the course of our lives. The pinnacle of our personalities that we built, the pride we take in asserting responsibility for our actions, for the choices we make and for the decisions we take, all crumple right before our very eyes.
Whatever subjective feeling we have, that we consciously control these behaviours is an illusion, they are merely nonconscious reflexive responses.
Accordingly, consciousness is epiphenomenal (a secondary phenomenon, a consequence or side-effect of the primary phenomenon) and we are (as T.H. Huxley said) "conscious automata, helpless spectators", (in Stuart Hameroff).
So, if consciousness is not what we use in order to guide our lives then what is? What determines our actions in fight or flight situations? Is there anything that could provide an answer of what has been the factor that determined human responses in their myriad decisive acts in the past?
My own personal experience corroborates the illusion of consciousness. In my younger days there were a few occasions where I found myself under threatening conditions. Conditions which required immediate and decisive action. As, I vividly remember, though might sound as oxymoron in the light of what follows, right at the most decisive moment in these encounters, I experienced a temporary but complete blackout,total loss of consciousness. It lasted mere seconds, but in these seconds adrenalin powered actions resolved (cleansed) the threatening circumstances.
The explanation that I could amass was that the blood flow was diverted towards the parts of my body, where blood was needed most i.e. muscles and away from the regions that they needed blood less. And among these regions, were the regions that conferred towards consciousness. Consciousness being obsolete and therefore temporarily shut off.

Monday 21 May 2007

Mind sets and their overriding influence

     Just imagine it, from all the books lying around for me to pick, I picked David Peat's book, and from the 200-odd pages to pick out, I picked the page, page 33, that so fitted my current thinking mode. I have a chain of thoughts for that, which is not current, at present. It concerns anticipation, built in the firing sequences of reverberating cell assemblies, the kind John Holland deals with, in his book about emergence. The future prediction built in, in thought processing mechanisms, but leave it for now.
     This is the extract that so fitted my current thought patterns, that I feel compelled to write about. It is out of the book of F. David Peat, "Pathways of Chance", published in Italy by Pari Publishing at 2007.
     I will quote the extract, and follow it with my comments. "That brings me to another point; in most cases scientists see what they expect to see. Or rather they have theories and methods that allow them to make calculations for certain types of systems. These theories then become ways of seeing".
     Taking on the point made beyond the isolated group of people, scientists, the same holds for every group of individuals, and for every single individual for that matter. Each one of us, either as by virtue of membership to a group we identify ourselves in, or our very own self, we hold theories, systems of beliefs, ideas that we use to explain and make sense out of the constantly unfolding events around us, they become ways of seeing , our ways of seeing.
     "To take one example, for centuries scientists were able to make calculations for nice simple , linear systems that were close to equilibrium. This meant that everything they saw around them was linear and near to equilibrium. Anything else, anything that didn't fit into that way of seeing and calculating , was dismissed as an anomaly".
     That is exactly the way, everyone of us, acts as well. Our built in system of beliefs and ideas, our common-sense, which we use to explain the world around us, becomes so overriding, that we quite easily dismiss everything else, that does not fit in our currently held systems of beliefs and ideas, as an anomaly.
     Taking the matter further, our set frame of mind is responsible for what we see or we do not see at all, before we go on about dismissing it. As our mind is built out of the firing sequences of reverberating cell assemblies (John Holland again), in response to stimuli in the environment, if we have not built the corresponding reverberating cell assemblies, to a given sequence of stimuli, that stimuli sequence will not elicit a response, at all: leaving us, totally unaware of its presence. No response elicited, no imprint in our mind of its existence. We do not see that at all, next to the lines of, it did not and does not exist for us. Leaving us in an ignorant state of mind.
     Totally unseen, or dismissed, it would have been OK, if it stopped there. However as all the beliefs, ideas in the world, are there because of individuals, acting as group or single entities, carry them on, so when we dismiss as an anomaly unfit systems of beliefs and ideas, we dismiss as well the individuals and the groups they belong, as easily too. Such an act is expressed in our lives in various ways and some of these ways are not good. They are not good at all. But anyway. Leave that for now.
     Back to the extract, "But then chaos theory came along, a way of dealing with non-linear systems and systems that are far from equilibrium. Suddenly scientist began to see chaos, complexity and fractals everywhere-from the stock market to clouds, mountains and insect populations".
     And there is the crunch, since scientists shown the way, so we should follow suit. Since all life systems we have built and continue to build, of whatever scale, are inherently non-linear and far from equilibrium. In the process of unfolding our life events, we should stop looking at chaos as the destruction of order, we should delve into its creative potential too. Where there is death there comes along, follows suit, rebirth.

Computerised data of private information systems analysed

     It concerns states achieved. And what are these states? Breach notifications? Trigger breach notifications. Trigger breach notifications when there is a breach in the security of the system. What system is that? The system comprised by the computerised data that include private information.
     So there is a system that is defined by its content and the content is computerised data of private information. Is that a valid definition? Can we describe a system in that manner? If we accept that as a definition in that case, that should hold for other systems too, more concrete than this case of a system is.
     Taking in account, that by addressing the concept of the system, we should think along the lines of agents, features of agents, conditions of its environment, its process space, the simple rules that hold, that govern the agents activity as they interact with each other and its environment Though environment might not be the correct term and "process space" is more appropriate. My suspicion is that the content of that system, the computerised data do not qualify it as a system, and as such we should accept it as a mere collection of entities and not a system.
      Since to qualify as a system it should have agents, features, conditions, process space, simple rules, interactions. And by them evolve through the stages of chaos, along with sensitive dependence on initial conditions, the development of emergent states, and from these developed states some of them will be selected. States selected will multiply, re-enforce and become the norm, emergence and natural selection.
     Computerised data as such can not be taken as possessing all these qualities therefore they are simply collections and not a system. There is a system though and the computerised data are the object they deal with. There are agents in such a system, and these are the individuals involved in handling the computerised data.
     And who are these agents? The person or business which conducts business in a state and which owns or licences computerised data which includes private information. Private information is the object they deal with and the nature of its object, namely private information, determines the rules of engagement, so to speak.
      Since they are private they should be kept secret from all apart from the person they deal with. Since the person-client, can not, or chooses not to, participate in the transactions the computerised data are used in, the person or business handles the data on its behalf, acts as a medium in a transaction that involves the person and the service or business, it transacts with.
     The private information should be kept secret from any other individual or business that is not involved in the transaction. The sole owner of the private information remains the individual its content refer to. No other person or business should have knowledge of the content of the data, neither the person or business that holds the data on its behalf. They can not own what is not theirs. They can own only that part of the data that is directly relevant to their own specific transactions with the person-client.
      The term computerised data can be easily translated into encrypted data. Therefore the person or business holds the private information in an encrypted form, at all times, and is only released, and more importantly released information, is only the portion that is relevant to the transaction, when a transaction takes place. Once the transaction is complete the information reverts back to its encrypted form.
      The release can be effected via a code by the client at the time of the transaction, programmed by software. Such a process if not eliminate, will minimise the risk of private information been acquired by a person without valid authorisation.
     Therefore to finish that deliberation here, the sole person that owns the private information is the person-client that the private information is about. The person or business keeps the computerised data, in an encrypted form, on the person's behalf, it can only own per transaction specific, portion of that data, and is only released when the transaction takes place.
The simple rule of secrecy is fulfilled.