We explain everything about the information, how it is used, its classification and other characteristics. Furthermore, its importance for the State.
What is information?
Information is a organized set of relevant data for one or more subjects who extract knowledge from it. That is, it is a series of knowledge communicated, shared or transmitted and that therefore constitutes some type of message. However, its definition varies depending on the discipline or approach from which it is thought.
For example, in biology, information is understood as the set of sensory stimuli that living beings exchange, while in journalism, information is the set of messages exchanged by the actors of a given society. To this we could add definitions from computer science, cybernetics or thermodynamics.
- See also: Sources of information
Types of information
Information can be classified in very different ways, according to numerous criteria. One of the most common has to do with the relationship established between the senders of the information and their eventual or possible recipients, as follows:
- Confidential or classified information . That which can only be accessed by a small group of people, given the secret, dangerous, sensitive or private nature of the data contained therein.
- Public information . That which, on the contrary, allows general access by anyone to its content, without requiring special permissions and without having any degree of privacy.
- Personal information . That which belongs to each person, that is, that emanates from a specific individual, who can decide with whom to share it or to whom to offer it.
- External information . That which emanates from an organization, institution or company, and whose recipients are entities or people external to it.
- Internal information . That, on the contrary, that emanates from an organization, institution or company, in order to be consumed internally, without going outside the organization.
Uses of information
Information has as many uses as the recipient can give it. They range from mere increase in knowledge that it possesses on a specific subject, or perhaps the knowledge applicable to a specific situation, that is, useful knowledge. Reading a user manual for a device will provide us with immediately applicable information, for example.
Other uses of information may be more strategic, allowing the recipient carry out better decision making better control processes, better evaluation rules or a better choice of alternatives, depending on what we are referring to.
Lastly, the information has cultural value that is, educational, informative. The greater the amount of information, the greater the knowledge possible, and therefore the greater the educational possibilities.
Information characteristics
The information, broadly speaking, meets the following characteristics:
- Meaning . That is, semantic, thematic, contextual or content of some nature, which each individual will use according to their own criteria.
- Importance . Although the importance of information is always relative to the recipient, that is, it depends on each person, taking into consideration how much the data received alters the behavior of individuals. Relevant information produces important or immediate changes, less relevant information produces nothing.
- Validity . Validity is understood as the validity of the information over time, that is, whether it is outdated or updated, which always depends on the context and its recipients.
- Validity . The information will be more or less reliable, more or less plausible or valid, depending on the sender and the receiver's criteria. If the latter considers that the issuer is not reliable, the information it issues will lose importance.
- Worth . Some type of specific use for the recipient, even if it is merely informative.
Information in society
Information is a precious commodity in human society and even in some animal societies. On the one hand, the management of information can affect the behavior of individuals, since allows complex forms of cooperation and organization .
On the other hand, the accumulation of information and knowledge opens the door to revolutionary changes in society, whether through the scientific-technological, or the philosophical, or the political-social.
In society, information It can be distributed free of charge, or it can form part of private assets. as in the case of manufacturing industries, which hide the specific production recipe for their most sought-after goods, so that they do not fall into the hands of the competition.
Information and Status
Since always propaganda and censorship have been ways in which the State controls what information circulates freely and which ones don't. This has become more complex in the so-called “information society” and thanks to the new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT).
This topic is the subject of national and international debate, especially since the Internet questioned the traditional idea of a country and a border. Nowadays, computer networks allow information to circulate much faster. and over distances far greater than ever before in human history.
On the other hand, scandals such as the one that occurred in the US electoral campaign won by Donald Trump, known as the “Cambridge Analytica” case, reveal the important impact of information on the life of States in the 21st century.
Information in computing
For computing, understood precisely as the science of information management, this concept is understood as a explicit knowledge, accumulated by living beings or systems experts when interacting with their environment. It has the value of being able to be stored, organized and recovered.
That's what computers are for, after all: large systems for classifying, retrieving and transmitting information, the latter contained in electronic storage formats.
Analog and digital information
We talk about analog and digital information within the framework of electronics, to differentiate two types of signal. The amplitude of the analog signal can vary freely taking any value (of electrical voltage).
For its part, A digital signal is one that has limiting bands with respect to the amplitude which it can take, and which are predetermined. This makes digital signals not continuous, but discrete, lacking the typical noise that analog signals have.
References
- “Information” in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Information” at Encyclopedia.com.
- “Information” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
