The RG, Information, organised the workshop "Information, Control & Communication". The title refers to two classics of information theory and cybernetics, namely "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine".

The workshop was held in April 2008 at the Harnack-Haus in Berlin and predominantly dealt with concepts of information theory as well as the question in how far for instance insights from quantum theory could or should lead to a revision of the term information. This was followed by a comparison of information processing and communication in machines and biological organisms and a debate on the question of whether models of information theory, originally developed for telecommunication, are suitable to capture the passing-on of information in biological systems (for instance human language or the dance of the bees as well as alarm calls of different animals species.)

And vice versa, researchers investigated what terms and concepts are used to develop machines that have quasi-communicative abilities. The workshop met its target of promoting the interdisciplinary understanding concerning the identification and labelling of parallels and differences of the terms information and communication across the disciplines.

A report on the workshop was published in issue 8 of the Junge Akademie Magazin, Heft 8, 2008, S. 18 f.