Information concepts

the long version

Information is essential to all human activity, and information in electronic form both amplifies and augments human information interactions. Surveys some of the different classical meanings of information, focuses on the ways that electronic technologies are affecting how we think about these senses of information, and introduces an emerging sense of information that has implications for how we work, play, and interact with others. The four senses selected for inclusion here are the following: thought and memory, communication process, artifact, and energy. Emphasizes how electronic representations have blurred media boundaries and added computational behaviors that yield new forms of information interaction, which, in turn, are stored, aggregated, and mined to create profiles that represent our cyber identities.