![]() Shannon’s actual "information theory," however, is reviewed elsewhere in an entry by that name in this encyclopedia.Īfter the preamble, conceptions of information of the following types will be reviewed, in succession: (11) (12) (13) Another author in this category is Luciano Floridi, a philosopher, who is developing and promoting an area of philosophy to be known as “Philosophy of information.” (14) He develops his own view of information as a philosopher, with attention to the issues of concern to that discipline in the article "Information." (15)īecause Norbert Wiener’s and Claude Shannon’s ideas of information were so influential at the dawn of the "Information Age," their influence is discussed in a preamble below. Prime examples include: Søren Brier’s "cybersemiotics," (7) Benny Karpatschof’s dissertation on "Human Activity," (8) Howard Resnikoff’s analysis of information within a mathematical, physical and signal detection framework, (9) Jan Kåhre’s "mathematical theory of information," (10) and Stonier’s 3-volume disquisition on biology, physics, and information. It is beyond the focus of this article to attempt a review of these larger intellectual programs. In other words, exposition of the meaning of the term "information" is not a primary goal, but only incidental to much larger projects. Some authors embed a discussion of information within a much larger philosophical or theoretical program. For coverage of other approaches to the concept, the reader is directed to reviews by Aspray, (1) Belkin, (2) Capurro & Hjørland, (3) Cornelius, (4) Meadow & Yuan (5) and Wersig & Neveling. ![]() The objective of this entry, however, is to concentrate on the ideas about information that have been either developed within the information disciplines or, in a few cases, which have come from other fields but have also been influential in the information disciplines. The effort to define information is active in other disciplines besides those explicitly concerned with the topic philosophy, cognitive science, electrical engineering, computer science, and systems theory, among others, have been active players on this scene as well. The discussion draws from writings over the last sixty years the approach is by category rather than by chronology. No effort will be made to capture and discuss every definition that has been provided in the literature rather major types will be presented, as well as popular ideas that are recurrent in the literature. In light of the lack of agreement about the definition of the term "information," the main objective of this entry will be to lay out some of the major classes of definitions and theoretical constructions of the term that are currently or recently in play. In this regard, the status of the term is similar to that of "communication" in the communication sciences. The meaning of this term is still highly contested. It would be fair to say that there is no widely agreed-upon definition or theoretical conception of the term. ![]() Perhaps for that reason, it is a term that has been defined in countless ways, over many decades. The concept "information" is of signal importance to all the information disciplines. Information, definition, three worlds, data–information–knowledge–wisdom, DIKW, cybernetics, information theory, feedback, social context Brookes, Michael Buckland, Ian Cornelius, Ronald Day, Richard Derr, Brenda Dervin, Fred Dretske, Jason Farradane, Christopher Fox, Bernd Frohmann, Jonathan Furner, J.A. Work of these authors is reviewed: Marcia J. ![]() The data–information–knowledge–wisdom (DIKW) continuum is also addressed. The impact of Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon is discussed, as well as the widespread influence of Karl Popper’s ideas. Seven categories of definitions are described: Communicatory or semiotic activity-based (i.e., information as event) propositional structural social multi-type and deconstructionist. Defining information remains such a contested project that any claim to present a unified, singular vision of the topic would be disingenuous. A selection of representative definitions of information is drawn from information science and related disciplines, and discussed and compared. ![]()
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