We are surrounded by the material world. Everything we encounter relates to physical fields and bodies. Between the objects there is a constant exchange of energy, passing from one form to another. Under the influence of energy, some changes occur in the properties of objects, which are called registration of information (registration of signals). These changes can be recorded, measured, observed, while forming new shocks that produce new interactions. The registered signals are called "data", "information" or "information".
What is "information"?
The concept of “information” has been known for over 2500 years. If you turn to Latin, you can find the meaning of the word information - clarification, presentation, awareness. Nowadays, this term is usually associated with materials and messages that people transmit to each other verbally, in writing, by electronic messages or in any other way. It is associated with what is stored in databases, libraries, archives; with the taste of food, indicators of measuring instruments, a map of the starry sky, etc.
The concept of information and its properties vary greatly depending on the place and area of application, since it is a way of describing the interaction of the source and recipient. A transmitted message to different recipients can produce a different amount of useful information. Moreover, the source and recipient may not necessarily be a person: the exchange of information also occurs in the animal and plant world.
Classification Approaches
There are various ways to conditionally split information. Types and properties of information are divided according to particularly pronounced features and characteristics. They also distinguish it by the type of signal perception, by the degree of significance, by the form of presentation. And each group has its own individual properties of information.
Perception and assimilation
First of all, we consider the information that we receive through the senses: they are divided into visual, gustatory, auditory, audiovisual, tactile and olfactory.
Through the organs of vision, a person perceives almost 90% of all incoming information. Other sensory organs are most often developed in animals: they use hearing or smelling more to obtain data on the space surrounding them.
Significance Distribution
When working with people, information is divided into the following types:
- personal (everything related to one person);
- special (for a certain group of people: scientific, technical, industrial, managerial);
- social (significant for the majority of mankind: ordinary (everyday communication), socio-political (obtained mainly from the media), aesthetic (theater, music, painting), scientific, etc.
Presentation form
When it comes to working with technical information, the question arises of its design in accordance with the rules so that all entities involved in this work can recognize and perceive it. Depending on the form of presentation, information can be divided into:
- textual (diary entry, telephone conversation, radio broadcast, essay writing, personal conversation, etc.);
- numerical (score in the match, time of departure of the bus, statistics on the birth of children, multiplication table, etc.);
- graphic (photograph, drawing, diagram, drawing);
- sound (sound signals, music, speech).
In its pure form, numerical information is rarely found, most often it is combined with textual or graphic. Graphic - the most visual and accessible for perception.The formed image is immediately transmitted to the brain, without requiring interpretation and processing, unlike text and numerical formats, which require a mental transformation of the image. The graphical view is also often combined with others, as it does not provide complete information about the data.
Other classification options
When considering the types and properties of information, it is necessary to take into account several more classifications:
- by subjects: social (human-human), biological (in the plant and animal world), technical (automatic-machine, automatic-human), genetic (from cell to cell and between organisms);
- by scope (geography, economics, sociology);
- by the nature of the source (primary, secondary, etc.);
- by the nature of the data carrier (paper, electronic, DNA molecule, etc.) and others.
Properties
We need information for the correct orientation in the environment, the formation of the necessary reaction to events, the choice of solutions. Not all human data is useful to him. Properly selected properties and information structure help to make a more accurate assessment of the situation in each case and make the best decision.
Information properties can be considered as a sign of the quality of the received data. When assessing the quality of the information received regarding a certain recipient, the following properties can be distinguished: reliability, relevance, accessibility, intelligibility, objectivity, completeness, relevance (usefulness), ergonomics, security.
Objectivity and credibility
The main properties of information are reliability and objectivity. If the data are not dependent on someone else's judgment or opinion, then they are considered objective. This is an important property, since information is essentially a reflection of the outside world and should not depend on the subjective perception of a person. Bias appears if the information received is a reflection of this world through the prism of experience, knowledge, opinion, preferences or judgment of a particular subject. For example, “heavy daughter” is subjective information, and “daughter weighs 25 kilograms” is objective, provided that the basic properties of the information were not distorted upon receipt (the scales showed the exact value).
Objective information is always reliable. But authentic ones can be both subjective and objective. Without this necessary property of information, we cannot make the right decision. The data may be incorrect for various reasons: misinformation (intentional distortion), external interference (such as a “damaged phone”), in case the facts are distorted (political debate, fishing tales, advertising, rumors).
Relevance and aging
The following important properties of information reflect its timeliness, importance at the current time. Information obtained at the right time will bring much more benefit than "yesterday." Information is considered irrelevant if it is outdated (for example, a TV program for the past week), is premature (in the summer watching the weather forecast for the winter), insignificant or unnecessary (ants on stilts miss by food).
The property of aging information is manifested in a decrease in its value over time. Moreover, aging does not depend on time, but on the emergence of more relevant data that supplement, refine or completely refute earlier ones. These properties of information depend on the intended purpose, for example, aesthetic (painting, literature) is aging slower, and scientific and technical (requirements for the characteristics of computers, indicators of measuring devices, data on operating systems) are faster.
Value (usefulness) and comprehensibility
Also important properties of information are its value and comprehensibility. The information obtained may be useful and useless.Their value is determined by the degree of applicability to the tasks that need to be solved using this information. This indicator is a purely subjective assessment: the necessary information for one person can be completely useless for another. This property is not considered when working with technology, since the tasks are set and evaluated by a person. There are times when a small amount of "useless" information can be useful. For example, some books come across uninformative pieces of text so that the reader can take a break from perceiving the serious and useful rest of the book.
People, as the main receivers of various information, relate to the properties of information with increased requirements, especially in terms of its comprehensibility. Whatever information is useful and relevant, if it is incomprehensible to the recipient (for example, voiced in a foreign language), then its value will sharply decrease. Also, when entering technical data, for example, into a computer, for their proper processing, the format of this data must be “understandable” to the computer.
Convenience of providing information
The concept of information and its properties are closely related to the logic, compactness and convenience of the form of its provision. Laconic, competent, evidence-based lecture by students will be perceived by students much better than chaotic and slurred. It is enough to watch a short video about how to change the firmware on the tablet than to read the multi-page manual.
The properties of information also include uniqueness and certainty. If a person’s speech is full of polysemantic phrases, gestures, words, then it becomes quite difficult to understand, complicates communication, leads to misunderstandings and conflicts. For example, in the phrase “Dmitry met Vera with a chocolate in his hands” it is not immediately clear who had chocolate in his hands - Dima or Vera. There is such a creative technique in the literature, called a pun, which is used to increase interest in the text among readers, helps to wake their imagination, and allows you to look at the same episode or plot from different points of view.
Media Information Properties
Information carrier may become:
- any item (desk in the classroom, a bunch of garbage, a flash drive, a tree, a rock, a flashlight);
- a substance in a different state (gas, liquid or a metal piece of rails);
- gravitational wave (attraction, pressure), electromagnetic wave (radio and light waves), acoustic wave (sound), etc.
Everything that is an environment for working with data can be written, saved and transmitted, it can be considered a medium.
The main forms of its transmission are signs (traffic light color, fading leaves of an indoor flower, squeak of an uninterruptible power supply, etc.) and signals (Morse code, light of a lighthouse). Since for the receiver the same signals and signs can carry different semantic load, the concept of “symbol” is used to fill them with meaning. The green traffic light is a symbol of traffic permission. The same symbols can have different meanings, for example, the sign “H” can mean the Russian letter “en”, the English “EH”, the designation of the chemical element of hydrogen, etc.
Next, we consider what properties of information can be distinguished when working with carriers. Data can be transmitted in analog and discrete fashion. Analog signals are continuous, varying in time and amplitude (voltage, current, temperature, speed). A signal called discrete - intermittent, taking a finite number of values, but not less than two. A person often works with analog signals. When working with technology, it is easier to use discrete ones, as they are simpler to process.
In this article all types and properties of information are discussed in detail.
