This question must remain open for the time being. Instead of adding another definition to the many, we would like to encourage a range of approaches to this question by collecting different definitions for comparison (see also our News Section). In this endeavour we depend on your support!
To enable the discussion of a subject, we must reach consensus about the terms in use. With daily life affairs, this consensus develops continuously. In established disciplines, a specialist community takes care of the terminology (technical terms). However, it becomes more complex, when new terms are added, which are used by different disciplines or have several colloquial meanings and have not yet been defined precisely.
“Information” and almost all of its composite terms are relatively modern “language structures”, as can be easily seen in foreign words or loan words. “Information” is used by technicians (as bits and bytes in “information technology” and “information engineering”) as well as by managers (as resources or assets in “information management”, as goods in the “information economy”), by information professionals (as documents in the “information brokerage”) and by social scientists (as a subject of study in the “information science”), but also by philosophers (as the object of “critical thinking”) and pedagogues (as contents of their “curricula”).
If you favour a particular definition, please let us know. (You may use our Contact Form.)