Information
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
![Mundus Intellectualis illustration from Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, page 217[1] by Robert Fludd, depicting a diagram of the human mind](/Image:Diagram_of_the_human_mind%2C_from_Robert_Fludd_%281574-1637%29%2C_Utriusque_cosmic_maioris_scilicet_et_minoris_metaphysica.jpg)
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message. Information can be recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Information is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system that can interpret the information.
Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. Therefore, in a general sense, information is information is an answer to a question. Information cannot be predicted and resolves uncertainty. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence and is inversely proportional to that. The more uncertain an event, the more information is required to resolve uncertainty of that event. The amount of information is measured in bits.
The concept of information becomes closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, understanding, mental stimuli, pattern, perception, representation, and entropy.
Etymology
The English word was apparently derived from the Latin stem (information-) of the nominative (informatio): this noun is derived from the verb "informare" (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 informer) from the Latin verb informare, which means to give form, or to form an idea of. Furthermore, Latin itself already 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 not clear.
The ancient Greek word for form was μορφή (morphe; cf. morph) and also εἶδος (eidos) "kind, idea, shape, set", the latter word was famously used in a technical philosophical sense by Plato (and later Aristotle) to denote the ideal identity or essence of something (see Theory of Forms). "Eidos" can also be associated with thought, proposition, or even concept.
See also
- Abstraction
- Accuracy and precision
- Classified information
- Complexity
- Cybernetics
- Data storage device#Recording medium
- Disinformation
- Freedom of information
- Gregory Bateson
- Information and communication technologies
- Information architecture
- Information overload
- Information superhighway
- Information systems
- Information theory
- Infornography
- Infosphere
- Library science
- Philosophy of information
- Prediction
- Propaganda model
- Relevance
