Information Theory – An Overview

In a broad sense, information is organized, processed and understood data. It gives context to existing data and allows reasonable decision making about future action. For instance, a single customer’s sale at a particular restaurant is statistical data about customer preferences, tastes and preferences, and can be used to create or modify advertising. This information is then used by sales representatives, managers, and employees who are responsible for the management of customer relationships.

Information management is very important in an information-based society. The ability to collect and manage information has developed into a complex system. One of the key principles of information management is the use of information as a tool. This is different from the informational equivalent of objects (such as cars, houses, or food) that have no practical use or utility outside of the information they provide. However, both semiotics and pragmatics are related to information management. Semiotics refers to the standards by which we learn about the world around us, and pragmatics is concerned with systems of action.

Information theory is a methodology of information management, using tools like the Theory of relativity, associated with structural logic, and associated with logical grammar. These tools enable people to form concepts from data and make inferences from those concepts to provide meaning. Information theory then is a group of methods for representing, organizing and managing information. A key idea of information theory is that knowledge has a practical role in the world.

Information theory then is a methodology of information processing: it is a way of organizing experience, information and knowledge so that we can use them to solve problems. It therefore cannot be reduced to causal input and its corresponding informational equivalent. In fact, we must admit that knowledge is neither a physical thing nor a function of the brain. Knowledge is a mental property that arises from a combination of many independent variables, the result of which determine an individual’s actual existence. It therefore follows that information and knowledge have no physical representation independent of the subject matter of knowledge itself.

One might suppose that information would have a physical representation independent of its knowledge content. This is not so. Even physical information can be information that arises from causal interactions in the brain. Information thus has two different representations: one as an information product independent of knowledge, and one as a causal component of that knowledge. Information theory thus shows how information interacts with the brain to produce knowledge.

This overview gives a good idea of how information theory deals with concepts like knowledge, information, knowledge-theoretic concepts. The key idea is that information systems do not necessarily consist of mere strings of numbers, but can they consist of complex symbolic structures. These symbolic structures are not mere systems of representation but contain internal representations of their own internal structures. They thus form a two-step process of information transformation: first information transforms itself through the interaction of informational systems and second information expresses itself in terms of these transformation.