It is the action, the reduction of uncertainty. It is not the message to be sent or the information content in the channel or the information content of noise in the channel or the message received.
For example, the data recorded on one's hard drive is not information under Shannon - it is merely information content, a message received or to be sent. Ditto for a file cabinet full of records or any record in the file cabinet. Ditto for things you have on your mind before you pick up the phone to call someone.
Like the DNA remains of a deceased person is inactive, the data recorded on one's hard drive does not become "information" until it has been communicated, reducing the Shannon entropy of the receiver.
Over the years, in casual conversation, "information" has developed a very broad meaning and is thrown around in our discussions here as if it is equivalent to the information content or message itself. And that can cause a great deal of confusion.
Or to put it another way, one risks looking at an element of the model and thinking he is talking about the model itself when he is not.
[[Like the DNA remains of a deceased person is inactive, the data recorded on one’s hard drive does not become “information” until it has been communicated, reducing the Shannon entropy of the receiver.]]
Bingo! like hte letter instructing a specific someone to do somethign specific that only that person can do, that sits sealed in an envelope on a desk, is not informaiton until it is received and acted upon- it is just content without a purpose until received. Intelligent agents MUST direct the letter to the appropriate person in order for the content to be useful.
chemical information sitting inside a container can not instruct itself to repair, draw fuel, or maintain itself. The container itself, with it’s own set of instructions, can not instruct itself to receive, utilize or control info unless there is higher info from outside conducting it. higher info o nthe outside can not do anythign without yet higher info instructing it how to instruct lower info. All these infos on their own are useless content without a conductor conducting the symphony, and any changes itnroduced will simply end up in chaos and death and dissappearance for the container and info contained inside
Clay may have sparked an amino acid, but it couldn’t arrange chemicals in such a manner as to give it the isntructing powers of higher info- and if nothign else existed before the ‘creation’ of htis first simple building block, there woudl be nowhere fro mwhich to draw this info from- and nature playing a game of ‘hot cold warm colder’ (accordign to Demski) woudl be entirely worthless to a simplistic arrangement of basic building blocks that had no way of ‘discerning’ what ‘hot cold, warmer colder’ meant- those ‘instructions’ from nature are meaningless to simplistic chemical structures.
" The great stumbling block to many in discussing Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication is that "information" is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver (or molecular machine) in going from a before state to an after state. ...the data recorded on one's hard drive does not become "information" until it has been communicated, reducing the Shannon entropy of the receiver."
The KISS principle applies. An examination always requires communication.