Information

From The IT Law Wiki

[edit] Overview

Information is the result of processing, gathering, manipulating and organizing data in a way that adds to the knowledge of the receiver. In other words, it is the context in which data is taken.

Information as a concept bears a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.

Many people speak about the Information Age as the advent of the Knowledge Age or knowledge society, the information society, and information technologies, and even though informatics, information science and computer science are often in the spotlight, the word "information" is often used without careful consideration of the various meanings it has acquired.

[edit] Social and political implications

While information has immense benefits and capabilities to improve our lives both individually and as a Nation, it also has dangers. Information about a person is potentially a means of influencing and controlling that person. Information challenges traditional sources of authority and institutions built on that authority. Experience, training, and education may be rendered useless by new information. Information can also erode responsibility: what was once considered a sin to be condemned or a crime to be punished may, with fuller knowledge, appear to some as an illness to be treated or a genetic defect to be repaired. This perception can lead to imposingly difficult questions about the limits on social engineering in the context of constitutional values of personal freedom and privacy.

It is for these reasons that information, and the electronic, chemical, biological, and social technologies that generate and give access to it, often affect constitutional relationships that we are accustomed to think of as political, economic, or legal in nature. Constitutional relationships deal with power, with limitations on power, and with the balance between them. Directly or indirectly, information often generates that power, informs its limitations, or affects their proper balance.

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