DIKUW - Definitions (cont): Information

Information consists of integrated data collections whose meaning comes from its analysis, interpretation, organization, and incorporation into models and processes expressed as explanations, hypotheses, or instructions. Information includes explanations/hypotheses of how things are related (e.g., patterns/groupings, cause-effect, co-variation), as well as instructions guiding actions (e.g., when musical data/symbols — notes, keys, etc. — are integrated into a musical score, it instructs the musician how to play an arrangement, and thus becomes information).

Information may have been learned (via rote or experientially) or it may be innate (genetic, intuitive, instinctive).

Information Validation. Some information can be validated by mathematical-logical, empirical, objective, or other analyses of underlying data; by qualitative experience; through comparison with competing information; through replication of experimental findings; and/or by social consensus. Through such validation processes, the information may be proven valid or invalidated as misinformation or disinformation.

The information validation process may be scientifically rigorous and obvious, informal and barely noticed (e.g., a slight nod in affirmation), or consist only of the give-and-take debate over alternative views of what is accurate/correct. The method of validation and the information selected for validation may, furthermore, be influenced by the focus/motives and priorities/values of the validators.

Information can be tacit, implicit, or explicit. It's explicit if it is codified and shared. It's implicit if it can be codified and shared (i.e., can be brought to consciousness awareness and put into sharable form), but isn’t. And it's tacit if it cannot be ever be shared (i.e., they exist only in a single person’s mind, is not accessible to consciousness, and lack adequate linguistic capacity to be shared with others in codified form, like the multitude of steps necessary to ride a bike).

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