The word "information" encapsulates a wide range of concepts and phenomena, of which
Belkin (1978) provided a most useful review. They relate to both processes and material states
which are closely inter-related and may often come to play in any situation.
That they are
inextricably interwoven is no excuse for not pursuing their differentiation and definition, even
if the latter are only tentative and temporary.
Remaining alert about what type of information
one is dealing with at any stage appears to be a basic requirement for effective reasoning.
The processes refer to the transformation and transportation of information.
One may
consider that they involve 6 main types of activities:
--acquisition,
--material, or physical, processing,
--intellectual processing,
--transmission,
--utilization, and
--assimilation.
Information-as-object may be differentiated according to its source, or store, as suggested by
Ruben (1992). I would rather consider 4 instead of his 3 orders:
--the hidden information existing in nature but yet to be discovered,
--the information existing in the environment, consisting of messages or stimuli, which are
intelligible but waiting to be perceived and interpreted (also called latent information),
--the information configured by individuals, and
--the information configured by groups or social systems.
There might soon be a need for a fifth order, the artificial information contained in computer
systems for collective use.
Information may further be categorized according to its various "states", which can be:
--a product, which encompasses information-as-thing, as-object, as-resource, and as-commodity;
--what is carried in a channel, including by extension the channel itself, as for instance
assumed in expressions such as "electronic information", or "the media"; and
--the contents.
All processes, sources, and states constantly interact and are interdependent.
But they are
distinct and do not have the same "value". Protons and neutrons are both basic constituents of
nuclei, neither the higher nor the lower orders exist without the other.
Likewise information
when communicated can be characterized concurrently by its source, process(es) and form(s)
under each product, channel, and contents states.
The "fundamental equation" proposed by Brookes (1980a,b) is not altered in this statement.
He tentatively formulated (Brookes, 1980a) it as:
where
K(S) is the knowledge structure
AI is the increment of information
S is the effect of the modification.
He also gave (Brookes, 1980b) another formulation which reads:
K(S)+AI=K(S+AS).
If the knowledge structure is defined as the paradigmatic structure, the fundamental equation
may be kept as it is. However one may wish to distinguish between the superficial knowledge
structure (semantic and syntactic) and the deep structure (paradigmatic) and thus use two
parallel equations of the same form. One may further consider that the ultimate benefit of
information is a combination of the two. I feel that it may be possible to derive from the above
another "'fundamental equation" for the effect, or value, of information, which would read:
E=K(S+f(S, AI))-K(S)
where K(S) stands for the paradigmatic structure of the knowledge base.
