How do we understand information in a universe that resists resolution into one single, simple system?:
Robert J. Marks: Before talking about information, you really have to define it… For example, if I burn a book to ashes and scatter the ashes around, have I destroyed information? Does it make a difference if there’s another copy of the book? If I take a picture, am I creating information? The answers depend on your definition of information.
On the other hand, if I’m given a page of Japanese text and I don’t read Japanese, does it have less information for me than it does to somebody who reads Japanese? Claude Shannon recognized this. He said, “It seems, to me, that we all define information as we choose. And depending on what field we are working in, we will choose different definitions. My own model of information theory was framed precisely to work with the problem of communication.”
News, “Information is the currency of life. But what IS it?” at Mind Matters News
Claude Shannon, incidentally, popularized the word “bit” (binary digit).
You may also enjoy these articles by Eric Holloway on information:
They say this is an information economy. So what is information? How, exactly, is an article in the news different from a random string of letters and punctuation marks?
and
How can we measure meaningful information? Neither randomness nor order alone creates meaning. So how can we identify communications?