“Information is a difference that makes a difference” – Gregory Bateson
When beginning the study of Information Science, it was evident very early on that there was a discrepancy over what information truly is. There are countless different definitions of what constitutes information, with every scholar, professor, and student having a slightly different outlook on the subject. The Wikipedia definition of information is something that “provides the answer to a question of some kind or resolves uncertainty.” This allows a very broad interpretation of what information is. However, experts including Theirauf and Floridi say that information can only be structured data, which eliminates any sort of unstructured data that can answer questions or resolve uncertainties. From reading all of these sources, I have generated my own idea of what information is.
In our class, a definition for information was given that said information can be used to make decisions. This is similar to Wikipedia’s explanation about how information can answer questions. We also said in class that a tweet was not considered information in Floridi’s map because it was not structured data. However, I believe that a tweet can be used as information in other definitions. If somebody were to tweet something such as “I love the Patriots, Tom Brady is the best of all time” then that would answer the question of what football team that person supports. Tweets also cause many people to make decisions. For example, Donald Trump’s tweets cause many people to decide that he is not fit for presidency. People absorb these tweets as information to make decisions and resolve uncertainties they might have. In that sense, I believe that tweets should be classified as information.
The extent to what I think could be considered information goes on from just tweets. In one of the readings, a study showed that Americans spend half of each day consuming information. The study focuses on television and radio heavily, but I believe that information is consumed in many more places, even when somebody sleeps. If somebody were to watch a horror movie before bed, and then have a bad dream because of it, they might learn from it and decide not to watch horror movies before bed anymore. The dream was an event that happened that led a person to make an informative decision. Looking at it in that sense, that dream could be information, although many sources such as Floridi would not classify it as such because it is not structured. These sort of events happen constantly throughout the day, often subconsciously so that people do not even know they are absorbing information. People’s actions and decisions stem from information they are consuming, even if they do not realize they are consuming it.
Our professor told us that if you asked anybody in the field of information science what information is, they would give you a slightly different answer. Conforming to this statement, I have already begun to have my own idea of what information is, which is sure to change over time and over the course of this class. I believe that information is anything that can be used to alter somebody’s decisions, opinions, actions, or knowledge. This definition allows for a much broader classification of what is information. This idea of information follows most closely with Bateson’s interpretation, “information is a difference that makes a difference.”
– Nick Bagley
Information Science 