To determine how a piece of information functions, a person should-- at the very least-- be able to identify the parts of the information system that carry the information and also identify that matter or energy that can store or process it. This involves finding out what the parts of the system are, how these parts are interrelated, and how they interact. She should also find out how the information interacts with the system's components, and what the general behaviors of the information and the system's other components are.

In a simple information system, each information-processing part of the system serves or performs one information processing- related function at a time, and information cannot affect more than one part of a system at a time. In a more complicated information system, information may affect more than one part of a system at a time, or serve more than one function at a time. A complex information system can potentially direct different parts of itself to different information-processing tasks. As systems become more complex, the potential for a particular system to recognize, manipulate, and control the information within and outside of itself increases because a system with many parts has many opportunities to designate specific parts for specific uses.

It can be tricky to identify information in a complicated system because as the number of elements that comprise a system increases, the more possible there are for ways information to exist within the system. It is especially tricky to identify information if you don't know what you are looking for, or what you are looking at. For instance, a person who does not know what the programming language "C" looks like will have recognizing, much less understanding the information contained in lines of C code.

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