What is Information?

Trying to recall all the varied times this has come up, and thought it might be useful to just have a thread for reference/discussion.

Will post some definitions later, but feel free to add your own.


-Sci

Trying to recall all the varied times this has come up, and thought it might be useful to just have a thread for reference/discussion.

Will post some definitions later, but feel free to add your own.


-Sci

 “We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns
that perpetuate themselves.”
― Norbert Wiener, The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society

“Information is information, not matter or energy.”
― Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

“It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part.”
― Norbert Wiener

Information science is about measuring messages that get the meaning going around and round in nature.

I can't remember who said it, but "That which deviates from chance expectation" is quite a useful definition

Put very simplistically, I think information is interaction.

I suppose it depends on context. It is used in a number of specific, technical ways, as well as in colloquial, informal ways.

I remember when our department (at work) was renamed from "data processing" to "information technology", from where I stood, it was mere marketing hype, to others it meant something. Data, on its own is meaningless, like the number '17'. But put that into a context such as "this account balance is 17.00" then it becomes information. But even the latter is still only meaningful in a broader context, in isolation, it is just as meaningless as before.-

I suppose it depends on context. It is used in a number of specific, technical ways, as well as in colloquial, informal ways.

I remember when our department (at work) was renamed from "data processing" to "information technology", from where I stood, it was mere marketing hype, to others it meant something. Data, on its own is meaningless, like the number '17'. But put that into a context such as "this account balance is 17.00" then it becomes information. But even the latter is still only meaningful in a broader context, in isolation, it is just as meaningless as before.-

This is exactly what I mean by interaction.  It is a process between that which is "informing" and that which is "informed and is never a thing in itself.

Here’s a couple of guys talking about this sort of stuff.

Interesting subject. Consider Gene Bellinger's take on the subject in Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom. He elaborated on Russell Ackoff's take. I know nothing about their work and am just using them for this discussion.

According to Russell Ackoff:

1. Data: symbols
   
2. Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions
   
3. Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how" questions
   
4. Understanding: appreciation of "why"
   
5. Wisdom: evaluated understanding.
   

This is an important question for people trying to teach self-awareness. Using data as bricks, information as brick walls, and knowledge as brick enclosures, understanding is the gestalt perception of the enclosure concept and may include other building material, as the essence is how they might be combined to produce a structure. Wisdom then is the integration of understanding into an integrated worldview relating many concepts.

Seekers seldom get past accumulation of information.

This popped up as an Academia rec for me, seemed interesting:

Information: From Philosophic to Physics Concepts for Informational Modeling of Consciousness

Information was a frequently used concept in many fields of investigation. However, this concept is still not really understood, when it is referred for instance to consciousness and its informational structure. In this paper it is followed the concept of information from philosophical to physics perspective, showing especially how this concept could be extended to matter in general and to the living in particular, as a result of the intimate interaction  between matter and information, the human body appearing as a bipolar informed-matter structure. It is detailed on this way how this concept could be referred to consciousness, and an informational modeling of consciousness as an informational system of the human body is presented. Based on the anatomic architecture of the organism and on the inference of the specific information concepts, it is shown that the informational system of the human body could be described by seven informational subsystems, which are reflected in consciousness as corresponding cognitive centers. These results are able to explain the main properties of consciousness, both the cognitive and extra-cognitive properties of the mind, like that observed during the near-death experiences and other similar  phenomena. Moreover, the results of such a modeling are compared with the existing empirical concepts and models on the energetic architecture of the organism, showing their relevance for the understanding of consciousness.