I was reading for exams when I came across "The Theory of Information Pickup
and Its Consequences," Ch. 14 in James Gibson’s The Ecological Approach to
Visual Perception. Gibson writes about ecological optics; a version of his
theory of affordances appears in ch. 8. He’s a small piece of what he writes
about information pickup:
The act of picking up information, moreover, is a continuous act, an
activity that is ceaseless and unbroken. The sea of energy in which we live
flows and changes without sharp breaks. Even the tiny fraction of this energy
that affects the receptors in the eyes, ear, nose, mouth, and skin is a flux,
not a sequence. The exploring, orienting, and adjusting of organs sink to a
minimum during sleep but do not stop dead. Hence, perceiving is a stream, and
William James’ description of the stream of consciousness (1890, Ch. 9),
applies to it. Discrete percepts, like discrete ideas, are "as mythical as the
Jack of Spades." (240)