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Information
as a concept bears a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage
to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of
information is closely related to notions of constraint,
communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge,
meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and
representation.
Many people speak about the Information Age as the advent of the
Knowledge Age or knowledge society, the information
society, the Information revolution, and information
technologies, and even though informatics, information science
and computer science are often in the spotlight, the word
"information" is often used without careful
consideration of the various meanings it has acquired.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest
historical meaning of the word information in English was the
act of informing, or giving form or shape to the mind, as in
education, instruction, or training. A quote from 1387:
"Five books come down from heaven for information of
mankind." It was also used for an item of training, e.g. a
particular instruction. "Melibee had heard the great skills
and reasons of Dame Prudence, and her wise information and
techniques."
The English word was apparently derived by adding the common
"noun of action" ending "-ation" (descended
through French from Latin "-tio") to the earlier verb
to inform, in the sense of to give form to the mind, to
discipline, instruct, teach: "Men so wise should go and
inform their kings." (1330) Inform itself comes (via
French) from the Latin verb informare, to give form to, to form
an idea of. Furthermore, Latin itself already even contained the
word informatio meaning concept or idea, but the extent to which
this may have influenced the development of the word information
in English is unclear.
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Information as an
influence which leads to a transformation
Information is any type of pattern that
influences the formation or transformation of other patterns. In
this sense, there is no need for a conscious mind to perceive,
much less appreciate, the pattern. Consider, for example, DNA.
The sequence of nucleotides is a pattern that influences the
formation and development of an organism without any need for a
conscious mind. Systems theory at times seems to refer to
information in this sense, assuming information does not
necessarily involve any conscious mind, and patterns circulating
(due to feedback) in the system can be called information. In
other words, it can be said that information in this sense is
something potentially perceived as representation, though not
created or presented for that purpose.
When Marshall McLuhan speaks of media and
their effects on human cultures, he refers to the structure of
artifacts that in turn shape our behaviors and mindsets. Also,
pheromones are often said to be "information" in this
sense.
Even though information and data are often
used interchangeably, they are actually very different. Data is
a set of unrelated information, and as such is of no use until
it is properly evaluated. Upon evaluation, once there is some
significant relation between data, and they show some relevance,
then they are converted into information. Now this same data can
be used for different purposes. Thus, till the data convey some
information, they are not useful.
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