information

Knowledge

2022

We explain everything about the information, how it is used, its classification and other characteristics. In addition, its importance to the State.

The information finds different formats, uses and forms of storage.

What is information?

Information is an organized set of data relevant to one or more subjects that extract knowledge from it. That is, it is a series of knowledge communicated, shared or transmitted and therefore constitute some type of message. However, its definition varies depending on the discipline or the approach from which it is thought.

For example, in the biology, information is understood as the set of sensory stimuli that exchange the living creatures, While in the journalism Information is the set of messages exchanged by the actors of a society determined. To this we could add definitions from the computing, cybernetics or thermodynamics.

Information types

Information can be classified in very different ways, based on many 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. The one that can only be accessed by a small set of persons, given the secret, dangerous, delicate or private nature of the data contained in it.
  • 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. The one that emanates from a organism, institution or business, and whose recipients are bodies or persons external to it.
  • Internal information. That, on the contrary, that emanates from an organism, institution or company, in order to be consumed internally, without going outside the organization.

Information uses

Valid information helps to make decisions for example about health.

The information has as many uses as the recipient can give it. They range from the mere increase of the knowledge that it possesses on a specific subject, or perhaps the applicable knowledge in a given situation, that is, useful knowledge. Reading a manual for the use of an appliance will give us immediately applicable information, for example.

Other uses of the information may be more strategic, allowing the recipient to carry out a better decision making, better control processes, better evaluation rules or a better choice of alternatives, depending on what we mean.

Finally, the information has a cultural value, that is, educational, informative. The greater amount of information, the greater possible knowledge, and therefore greater educational possibilities

Information characteristics

The information, broadly speaking, meets the following characteristics:

  • Meaning. That is to say, semantic, thematic, contextual content or of some nature, that each individual will use according to their own criteria.
  • Importance. Although the importance of information is always relative to the receiver, that is, it depends on each person, taking into consideration how much the received data alter the behavior of individuals. Relevant information produces important or immediate changes, little relevant does not produce anything.
  • Validity. The validity of the information in the weather, that is, if it is outdated or up-to-date, which always depends on the context and its recipients.
  • Validity. The information will be more or less reliable, more or less credible or valid, depending on the issuer and the receiver's criteria. If the latter considers that the issuer is unreliable, the information it issues will lose importance.
  • Value. Some type of specific use for the recipient, even if it is merely informative.

Information in society

Information is a precious commodity in the human society and even in some animal societies.On the one hand, the management of information can influence the behavior of individuals, since it allows complex forms of cooperation and organization.

On the other hand, the accumulation of information and knowledge allows opening the door to revolutionary changes in society, either from the hand of what scientific–technological, or what philosophical, or of the political-social.

In society, information can be distributed free of charge, or it can be part of the patrimonies private, as in the case of manufacturing industries, which hide the specific recipe for the production of their most valued goods, so that they do not fall into the hands of the competition.

Information and Status

In a democratic state, the government disseminates information about its own actions.

Propaganda and censorship have always been ways in which the State controls which information circulates freely and which does not. This has become more complex in the so-called “society of Information”And thanks to the new Information and Communication Technologies (TIC).

This issue is the subject of national and international debate, especially since Internet he questioned the traditional idea of ​​the country and the border. Currently, computer networks they allow information to circulate much faster and over much greater distances 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.

Informatics information

For computing, understood precisely as the science of information management, this concept is understood as an 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 retrieved.

For that, after all, the computers: large systems for the classification, retrieval and transmission of information, the latter contained in electronic storage formats.

Analog and digital information

There is talk of analog and digital information in the framework of the 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 limit bands with respect to the amplitude that it can take, and that are predetermined. This makes digital signals not continuous, but discrete, devoid of the typical noise that analog signals have.

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