[Doctor Stochastic]

Information is technical term (primarly in communications engineering) which means the number of possible choices in messages. Whether the message is "meaningful" isn't part of the theory. For example, with 8 bits, one can select 256 different object at most. Errors or noise could reduce this number. There isn't any suggestion that the selected object either exists or is meaningful.

The original papers should be available at Bell Labs.

There's also a book by Warren Weaver and Claude Shannon about the subject.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the definition and the link!

I find the definition very interesting but too narrow because it focuses on The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Also, information theory has broadened considerably since 1948 and your original statement was all encompassing:

All of mathematical information theory looks at information independent of meaning

Omega, for instance, is more akin to an array or a database than to communication - in that a key question is whether one can determine content at a specified position of Omega.