Information

Organized, synthesized, and contextualized Data. Information answers questions: who, what, where, when, how.

Once information is applied, internalized, and validated through experience, it becomes Knowledge.

Types

• Syntactic: form and structure
• Semantic: meaning and reference
• Pragmatic: utility and use

Properties

In 1982 Harlan Cleveland characterized information through six properties:

1. Expandable — “The facts are never all in”
2. Compressible — can be concentrated and summarized
3. Substitutable — can replace capital, labor, or materials
4. Transportable — speed and volume transformation
5. Diffusive — tends to leak
6. Shareable — unlike physical resources

Information Theory (Shannon) addresses only the syntactic level — how much can be transmitted, not what it means.