Introduction
Sometimes I’m like that proverbial dog with a bone. When I see something I want, or in this case, something I want to understand. I keep at it until I learn it. Lately, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around something called the physics of information. This field is typically described as “the study of how information is represented, processed, and conserved in physical systems, and how the fundamental laws of physics—such as thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and relativity—govern the behavior and limits of information.”[i]
I know, that sounds complicated. And I won’t lie, it is. It’s hard to grasp, especially for someone like me without a deep background in physics. But in case you’re a bit like me, I’ve decided to share my ongoing efforts to make sense of it all. I’ll pick a topic, try to understand it, write about it, and then revisit it later from another angle. One of the topics I’ve been circling back to lately is a deceptively simple question: what is information?
I don’t mean the dictionary definition. That’s not much help in the context of what I’m exploring. I find that the concept of information is a lot like the concept of time. Ask someone if they know what time is and they’ll say, “Sure.” But ask them to define it, and you’ll likely get a blank stare, or a bunch of different interpretations. Same with information. And one thing I want to emphasize right up front is this: information might not be what you think it is.
So I invite you to join me on this dive down the information rabbit hole. Maybe, if I’m lucky,leep clinic all wired up. I’ll find a way to explain what information really is, at least for us laypeople.
So… What is Information?
If I asked you to tell me what information is, you’d probably say something like: data, facts, news, things stored on a computer. Or maybe you’d say:
“Information is what I read in an article,” or “It’s what I get when a question is answered,” or “It’s what Google gives me.”
And honestly, I wouldn’t say those answers are wrong. But they’re surface-level, superficial. They describe how we experience information, not what it fundamentally is. So let’s try going a bit deeper.
Try this. Pick up any two objects near you and look at them. You’ll notice ways they differ. Maybe one is heavier, the other a different color, a different texture or shape. You could list all those differences out. But here’s the key question I want you to ponder:
Which of those differences actually matter in some way?
That’s where information comes in.
Scientist Gregory Bateson defined information as “a difference that makes a difference.” Bateson is saying that information is not just any difference, but one that causes a change, has an effect, triggers recognition or a response. In information theory and communication science, this is what separates raw data from information that actually matters, what scientists call “signal” as opposed to “noise.” If we run with the example of a message, all the random or irrelevant differences in the message are just noise. The actual information is found in the signal, that part of the message that makes a difference to someone or something.
The weight difference between two rocks might not matter to you, but to a scale, it does. The color difference between two pills might not seem important unless one of them is medicine and the other isn’t. Context turns difference into meaning. Pure and simple. It’s not the article, not the spreadsheet, not the email. Those are just the ways information is expressed.
To elaborate: Suppose I get an email from my doctor. It says, “Hi Jeff, your test results came back. All looks good – no signs of infection.”
That email feels like information, right? But let’s dig deeper. The email is written in English. It traveled through my ISP. I read it on my computer screen. Are any of these information? No. Those are just the mediums information travels through.
The real result of that email is this: I now know something I didn’t know before. I’m clear of infection! That’s the shift, the change from uncertainty to certainty, from worry to relief. That change in knowledge is information. It’s the difference between what I believed before and what I believe now.
Let me try to put that into a clear description: Information isn’t just facts or stuff you find on Google. It’s a pattern in the world that makes one thing different from another. It’s not the message, it’s the change the message causes. This is the simplistic beauty in what Gregory Bateson said: information is “the difference that makes a difference.” And today, which is both mind-blowing and exciting, some scientists think information might be even more fundamental than matter or energy. It might be the raw fabric that reality is woven from!
Here’s another way to think about it. Suppose you open the same email ten times. Each time, it’s the same message. Eventually, it stops feeling like information. Why? Because it’s no longer making a difference. It’s not changing anything about what you know or feel. The medium is still there—but the information, the impact of the difference, is gone.
And that’s interesting. It suggests that something can be information—can be signal—at one moment, but later, as its impact fades, it becomes non-information, or even noise. In other words, information isn’t fixed in time. It’s not just about what something is, but when and how it affects us. What was once informative can become background noise. Thus, a difference that once made a difference can become irrelevant. That’s a powerful reminder that information is dynamic, not static. It lives and dies in context!
To put a final nail in this example: An email is a message. The words in an email are symbols. The information, however, will be found in the change of what’s true for the reader – the difference the reader experiences before and after reading it.
When this started to finally making sense to me, I began to understand why defining information is so tricky. It’s slippery. It’s not the coals in a fire, or even the fire itself. It’s like the smoke from a fire – impossible to hold, but rich with meaning. Try to grab it and it slips through your fingers. But if you watch it closely, smell it, you can learn a lot, like the difference between a lovely campfire and your house burning down.
Is information always meaningful?
In a sense, yes, information is always meaningful, because if it doesn’t make a difference to someone or something, it’s not really information. Information is knowledge in context. That context might be a human mind, a machine, a cell, or even a scale. The context determines whether the difference matters, and that’s what gives information its meaning.
This makes me wonder if information is, in a way, inherently “meta.” What I mean by this is that information is not just a property of things, it’s about the relationships between things, about what changes, and to whom that change matters. Again, information isn’t just content; it’s content that has context, impact, and perspective built into it. In that sense, it’s always pointing to something else. It’s always about a difference, and about a difference that matters.
So where does that leave us?
I don’t think I’ve solved the mystery of what information is, certainly not fully. But I feel like I’ve gotten closer to a way of seeing it and understanding it more clearly. All I can do is hope that maybe you have too. If you’re still reading, I’d love to know what you think. Does this way of looking at information resonate with you? Or raise more questions?
In any case, I’m not done exploring. There’s much more to say – about how information connects to time, to consciousness, even to the structure of reality itself. Stay with me. We’ll get there together.
[i] Perplexity.
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