information

Information is knowledge communicated or received about a particular fact or circumstance. It can also refer to data that has been processed, organized, or structured to have meaning. In everyday use, information denotes facts or intelligence that reduce uncertainty about a subject.

The term has roots in Latin informare, meaning to shape or form, and has evolved through philosophy, science, and communications studies to describe meaning-bearing content conveyed by signs, signals, or messages. In information theory, information is quantified as the reduction of uncertainty. The basic unit is the bit, and information content can be measured with logarithmic scales. Shannon entropy summarizes the average information produced by a source, while mutual information measures how much information two variables share.

Distinctions are often made among data, information, and knowledge. Data are raw observations or symbols; information is data that has been processed or interpreted to be meaningful; knowledge is information that has been integrated and can be applied.

Applications span many fields. Information science studies how information is created, stored, retrieved, and disseminated; libraries, archives, and databases are central to these tasks. In computing and telecommunications, information is encoded as bits and transmitted or stored across networks and devices.

Quality and ethics matter: information should be accurate, relevant, timely, and accessible, yet challenges such as privacy concerns, misinformation, and information overload can affect its use and value.