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Why is Information So Hard to Define?

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Sonja Settle

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014 | SETT1774_IP1

Why is Information So Hard to Define?

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Introduction

Before one can begin an investigation to determine why information is so hard to define, one must first answer the question, “Is information hard to define?” When used in everyday speech, the word seems to be something that most people assume they understand and

intuitively, something that they probably do understand within the context of the conversation that is occurring. However, a precise, standardized definition remains elusive.

When Chaim Zins (2007) surveyed 57 leading information science scholars worldwide regarding definitions of information, his survey yielded approximately 63 definitions. This phenomenon is echoed when one does a quick review of the definitions for information used in peer-reviewed sources. Each source yields distinctly different definitions, ranging from the Zeleny’s succinct definition (know what) to Popper’s  prolix invention of three entire new worlds to describe the one word (Rowley 2007; Bawden 2001). The definitions also range from those that are based in science (a pattern of organization of matter and energy) to those that are based in communications (news, intelligence, and the communication of facts) (Bates 2006; Bawden 2001). The more sources one consults, the more definitions of information one will encounter.

It is this lack of consensus among experts that allows one to conclude little else but that the word information is hard to define.

Two main issues exist that make defining information so difficult. First, there exists a disagreement regarding whether information constitutes a product or a process. Secondly, and more importantly, it is difficult to define information because the definition of information is subjective: it cannot be quantified, the designation of value and meaning are subjective, and needs within specific disciplines are subjective.

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Information as Product or Process

Anthony  Debons,  believes  that  information  “represents  both  a  process  and  a  product,”  

and he considers products like gestures, speech, and written documents all to be information (Zins 2007). Michael Buckland, also in the Zins study (2007), defines information as, “anything perceived as potentially signifying something  (e.g.  printed  books).”    Buckland (1991) extends this definition to include physical objects like dinosaur bones (because little would be known about dinosaurs if their bones had not been discovered) and even objects like globes, which provide  a  “physical  description.”

However, many information experts are not proponents of defining information as a thing. Marcia Bates (2006) states that all things in the universe contain information; she does not say that all things in the universe are information (emphasis mine). She, like Lester and Koehler (2007), purport that an information product is something separate and distinct from information itself. Lester and Koehler (2007, 19) believe that information products are merely

“representation[s]  of  information” but not actual information. They assert that those who include books and documents as information are confused. (Lester and Koehler 2007) If it is true that those who consider products to be information are confused, then there quite a few notable information scholars who are confused, including Popper (Bawden 2001), many of the global scholars in the Zins study (2007), and the writers of the Oxford English Dictionary (Buckland 1991).

According to Lester and Koehler (2007, 19), however, information is not a product, but is instead a process where an information product serves as an  instrument  in  an  “informative  event”  

and that event “shapes  our  inward  images.” In addition, Rowley (2007) discusses the idea that data must be processed before it becomes  “meaningful”  and  “understood  by  the  recipient.” This

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theory implies that only after data becomes meaningful and understood, does it become information.

Determining whether information is a product or process (or some combination of the two) is problematic because inherent in the discussion of information definitions is the curious situation where every definition that every researcher creates may be correct. For example, many of the scholars in the Zins study (2007) do not agree with one another, but none of them can  single  out  another,  and  say,  “Your  definition  is  wrong,”  because there are no quantitative procedures that can test or measure information in some way to definitively say which is true.

This situation demonstrates the second reason that information is so hard to define: it is inherently subjective.

Information is Subjective

To demonstrate the subjective nature of defining information, one merely needs to

juxtapose a health scientist with an information scientist. First, consider a health scientist who is writing a paper about obesity. The scientist may begin by defining obesity to help her audience understand the parameters for what obesity is and what it is not. Her definition would be objective and measurable. For instance, she would not define obesity as someone who “looks fat”. That subjective definition would not be precise because it may include someone who is obese, but it might also include someone who is merely overweight or a woman who is pregnant.

Instead, the health scientist would use quantitative measurements to define obesity. Therefore, her definition might be that obesity is a BMI greater or equal to 30, where BMI is a person’s   weight  in  kilograms  divided  by  the  person’s  height  in  meters squared (CDC 2014). The health scientist’s  definition  is  objective because it can be described in terms that are measured in standard measurement units and quantified using a standardized formula.

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In contrast to the health scientist, an information scientist writing a paper about information-seeking behavior can not define information in terms that are measured and quantified. Although information is often defined in terms of data (Rowley 2007), with data forming the building blocks of information, there are no quantitative measures that one can use in order to numerically or definitively determine that,  for  instance,  “this  much”  data  equals  

“information”. Alas, the value of data, or lack thereof, is not found in numerical measures;

instead value is subjectively determined by the recipient. Jashapara, quoted in Rowley (2007), stated that,  “It  is  the  receiver  of  the  data  that  determines  whether  a  message  is  data  or  

information.” If data is valuable and useful to the receiver, then data transitions from data to information and if the data is not valuable or useful to the receiver, then it remains data.

Therefore the exact same data viewed by two different people might simultaneously be both data and information. In other words, information is subjective and determined in the mind of the thinker — and, if the large variety of definitions is any indication, it is apparent that no two minds think alike.

Adding the viewpoint of different disciplines into the already almost infinitely diverse mix of individual human brains, amplifies the complexity of the situation. Each discipline has its own subjective approach that guides the definition of information within that field (Lester and Koehler 2007). For example, Zins  (2007)  states  that  “for Information Science, all the panel members [in his survey] unanimously implement  nonmetaphysical  approaches.” However, philosophy and religious scholars would likely disagree with the outright rejection of metaphysical information. According to Bawden (2001), physical scientists may include

“energy, matter, space, and time” in their definition of information, while biologists may specifically  refer  to  genes  and  DNA  in  their  definition  because  of  the  “information  content”  of  

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the human genome. These statements demonstrate that the subjective needs of a discipline dictate how information is defined.

Conclusion

As this paper has demonstrated, information is indeed hard to define. The lack of a precise, standardized definition results first from the inability of information scholars to agree on the issue of what constitutes information: product or process. This lack of agreement, however, is underscored by what I believe is the primary reason for the difficulty in defining information:

its  subjective  nature.    When  one’s  perception  is  the  determinant  guide,  then  any  definition  of information will be hard to refute, and conversely, hard to prove. To prevent the discussions from degrading to the point that information scholars are asking what the “meaning of the word is is” (Clinton 1998), perhaps scholars need to approach the act of defining information on a case-by-case basis, setting and clearly demarking parameters for their individual research based on the scope of their study and the discipline in which they are operating.

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References

Bates,  Marcia.    2006.    “Fundamental  forms  of  information.”    Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 57(8): 1033-1045.

Bawden,  David.    2001.    “The  shifting  terminologies  of  information.”    Aslib Proceedings 53(3):

93-98.

Buckland,  Michael.    1991.    “Information  as  thing.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 42(5): 351-360.

Centers  for  Disease  Control  and  Prevention.    2014.    “Healthy  weight:  it’s  not  a  diet,  it’s  a   lifestyle!”  Updated on July 16, 2014 at

www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/index.html

Clinton,  William.    1998.    “Transcripts  from  the  Clinton  Grand  Jury  Testimony.”    Federal  News   Service.

www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/politics/special/clinton/stories/bctest092198_4.html Lester, June and Wallace C. Koehler, Jr. 2007. Fundamentals of Information Studies. 2nd ed.

New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.

Rowley,  Jennifer.    2007.    “The  wisdom  hierarchy:  representations  of  the  DIKW  hierarchy.”    

Journal of Information Science 33(2): 163-180.

Zins,  Chaim.    2007.    “Conceptual  Approaches  for  Defining  Data,  Information,  and  Knowledge.”    

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 58(4): 479- 493.

References

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