n]
| 1. | knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance; news: information concerning a crime. |
| 2. | knowledge gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc.; factual data: His wealth of general information is amazing. |
| 3. | the act or fact of informing. |
| 4. | an office, station, service, or employee whose function is to provide information to the public: The ticket seller said to ask information for a timetable. |
| 5. | Directory Assistance. |
| 6. | Law.
|
| 7. | (in information theory) an indication of the number of possible choices of messages, expressible as the value of some monotonic function of the number of choices, usually the logarithm to the base 2. |
| 8. | Computers.
|

| a telephone company service that furnishes telephone directory information over the telephone. |
in·for·ma·tion (ĭn'fər-mā'shən) n.
|
information data
The result of applying data processing to data, giving it context and meaning. Information can then be further processed to yeild knowledge.
People or computers can find patterns in data to perceive information, and information can be used to enhance knowledge. Since knowledge is prerequisite to wisdom, we always want more data and information. But, as modern societies verge on information overload, we especially need better ways to find patterns.
1234567.89 is data.
"Your bank balance has jumped 8087% to $1234567.89" is information.
"Nobody owes me that much money" is knowledge.
"I'd better talk to the bank before I spend it, because of what has happened to other people" is wisdom.
(2007-09-10)