The term informavore (also spelled informivore) characterizes an organism that consumes

information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...

. It is meant to be a description of human behavior in modern information society, in comparison to

omnivore An omnivore () is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and animal matter, omnivores digest carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber, and metabolize the nut ...

, as a description of humans consuming food. George A. Miller coined the term in 1983 as an analogy to how organisms survive by consuming negative

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodyna ...

(as suggested by

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...

). Miller states, "Just as the body survives by ingesting negative entropy, so the mind survives by ingesting information. In a very general sense, ''all higher organisms are informavores''." An early use of the term was in a newspaper article by Jonathan Chevreau where he quotes a speech made by

Zenon Pylyshyn Zenon Walter Pylyshyn (; 25 August 1937–6 December 2022) was a Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher. He was a Canada Council Senior Fellow from 1963 to 1964. Pylyshyn's research generally involved the theoretical analysis of the na ...

. Soon after, the term appeared in the introduction of Pylyshyn's seminal book on Cognitive Science, ''Computation and Cognition''. More recently the term has been popularized by philosopher

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields rel ...

in his book ''Kinds of Minds'' and by cognitive scientist

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...

References

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External links

"informavore"
at Word Spy Information Age 1980s neologisms