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Abstract

Many definitions of information have been suggested throughout the history of information science. In this essay, the objective has been to provide a definition that is usable for the physical, biological and social meanings of the term, covering the various senses important to our field. Information has been defined as the pattern of organization of matter and energy. Information is everywhere except where there is total entropy. Living beings process, organize and ascribe meaning to information. Some pattern of organization that has been given meaning by a living being has been defined as information 2, while the above definition is information 1, when it is desirable to make the distinction. Knowledge has been defined as information given meaning and integrated with other contents of understanding. Meaning itself is rooted ultimately in biological survival. In the human being, extensive processing space in the brain has made possible the generation of extremely rich cultural and interpersonal meaning, which imbues human interactions. (In the short term, not all meaning that humans ascribe to information is the result of evolutionary processes. Our extensive brain processing space also enables us to hold beliefs for the short term that, over the long term, may actually be harmful to survival.) Data 1 has been defined as that portion of the entire information environment (including internal inputs) that is taken in, or processed, by an organism. Data 2 is that information that is selected or generated and used by human beings for research or other social purposes. This definition of information is not reductive--that is, it does not imply that information is all and only the most microscopic physical manifestation of matter and energy. Information principally exists for organisms at many emergent levels. A human being, for example, can see this account as tiny marks on a piece of paper, as letters of the alphabet, as words of the English language, as a sequence of ideas, as a genre of publication, as a philosophical position and so on. Thus, patterns of organization are not all equal in the life experience of animals. Some types of patterns are more important, some less so. Some parts of patterns are repetitive and can be compressed in mental storage. As mental storage space is generally limited and its maintenance costly to an animal, adaptive advantage accrues to the species that develops efficient storage. As a result, many species process elements of their environment in ways efficient and effective for their particular purposes; that is, as patterns of organization that are experienced as emergent wholes. We see a chair as a chair, not only as a pattern of light and dark. We see a string of actions by a salesperson as bait and switch, not just as a sequence of actions. We understand a series of statements as parts of a whole philosophical argument, not just as a series of sentences. The understanding of information embraced here recognizes and builds on the idea that these emergent wholes are efficient for storage and effective for the life purposes of human beings as successful animals (to date) on our planet. Thus, people experience their lives in terms of these emergent objects and relations, for the most part. Likewise, information is stored in retrieval systems in such a way that it can be represented to human beings in their preferred emergent forms, rather than in the pixels or bits in which the information is actually encoded within the information system.