An Ongoing List of Definitions and Descriptions
“The word ‘information’ has been given different meanings by various writers in the general field of information theory. It is likely that at least a number of these will prove sufficiently useful in certain applications to deserve further study and permanent recognition. It is hardly to be expected that a single concept of information would satisfactorily account for the numerous possible applications of this general field.”
— Claude Shannon
1
What we infer from gestures, language, texts, and other objects
2
Material forms of communication—bits, books, and other kinds of physical messages and records
3
An instance of an information type
4
Any communication or representation of knowledge such as facts, data, or opinions in any medium or form, including textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, narrative, or audiovisual
5
Knowledge — e.g., data, instructions — in any medium or form that can be communicated between system entities
6
Facts and ideas, which can be represented (encoded) as various forms of data
7
The meaning that a human assigns to data by means of the known conventions used in their representation
8
Meaningful interpretation or expression of data
9
Knowledge that is exchangeable amongst users, about things, facts, concepts, and so on, in a universe of discourse
10
Data that has semantic content (i.e. meaning) in a certain context
National Institute of Standards and Technology Glossary
U.S. Department of Commerce (2023)
11
Related to meaning or human intention
12
A message used by a sender to represent one or more concepts within a communication process, intended to increase knowledge in recipients
13
A message recorded in the text of a document
14
The occurrence of a communication process that takes place between the sender and the recipient of the message
15
Data that has been processed into a form that is meaningful to the recipient
16
The change determined in the cognitive heritage of an individual
17
Anything perceived as potentially signifying something (e.g. printed books)
18
The process of informing
19
That which is learned from some evidence or communication
20
That which is conveyed, and possibly amenable to analysis and interpretation, through data and the context in which the data are assembled.
21
The act of communicating knowledge
22
The selection within a system
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Set together out of data and knowledge comes out from putting together information
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Represented knowledge
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Data received through a communication process that proves of value in making decisions
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A state of awareness (consciousness) and the physical manifestations they form
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The end product of data processing
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The sum of the data related to an entity
29
Organized data (answering the following basic questions: What? Who? When? Where?)
30
Collections of data that thereby become meaningful to human beings
31
Data that is communicated, has meaning, has an effect, has a goal
32
Resources useful or relevant or functional for information seekers
33
Data organized according to an ontology that defines the relationships between some set of topics
34
An organism’s or an agent’s active or latent inferential frame that guides the selection of data for its own further development or construction
35
Data that has been categorized, counted, and thus given meaning, relevance, or purpose
36
An assessment or interpretation of data
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Dynamic objects of cultural experience having the aspect of being belief-neutral and a dual nature of content and medium
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The aggregation of data to make coherent observations about the world
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A quality by a given signal relative to a certain mechanism
40
A set of facts with processing capability added, such as context, relationships to other facts about the same or related objects, implying an increased usefulness
41
Knowledge recorded on a spatio-temporal support
42
A relationship between an inner arrangement of a system and its present embodiment in reality (explicate order) including mediating memory processes (i.e., historically dependent processes) releasing the meaning
43
Recorded and organized data that can be communicated
44
Facts, figures, and other forms of meaningful representations that when encountered by or presented to a human being are used to enhance his/her understanding of a subject or related topics
45
Data which is collected together with commentary, context and analysis so as to be meaningful to others
46
A phenomenon generated from knowledge and integrated
therein, analyzed and interpreted to achieve the transfer
process of message (i.e., meaningful content) and the cognitive transformations of people and communities, in a
historical, cultural and social context
47
The intentional composition of data by a sender with the goal of modifying the knowledge state of an interpreter or receiver
48
The embedding of signs-in-a-proximal-context (i.e., data) in a distal context
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An organized collection of disparate datum
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The process of becoming informed; it is dependent on knowledge, which is processed data
51
Facts and ideas communicated (or made available for communication)
52
Meaningful data
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Data or knowledge processed into relations (between data and recipient)
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Data organized to produce meaning
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A set of symbols that represent knowledge
56
Anything communicated among living things
Last updated February 10, 2024
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