game theory book: Osbourne ad Rubenstein

To know how a particular area of information exists, a person should know how its substance is organized in space. She should also know how different activities, processes, and behaviors indicate specific states of existence or patterns of organization that change over time. Information can be stored, communicated, measured, processed, coded, transmitted, transformed, recognized, interpreted, or any and all of the above. decoded, transmitted, translated, recognized, and interpreted. Many of these processes and behaviors are similar, closely related, or symbiotic, but still distinct. For instance, when information is communicated, it moves toward a destination in time, space, or both so that the state of the information system changes. Transmission, transformation, recognition, coding, and interpretation are a few notable processes involved in communication. On the other hand, when information is stored, the organization of its physical components exists in a stable state over a period of time. Blueprints, DNA, RNA, and computer software are a few examples of stored information. In each example, the physical organization of the information stays the same until, or even as it is engaged by some other process.

No information can exist in complete isolation, or consist of matter and/or energy that is absolutely motionless. When a person talks about information in relation to its surroundings, carrier, or source, she talks about it in terms of the system that contains it. When two or more interacting entities create information, they comprise an information system. The state of an information system is defined and can be described by:

• the organization of the matter and/or energy comprising the system.
• the activities affecting the organization of the system's components over an interval of time.

An information system is defined by its components, their relationships to one another, and their interactions. When information is transmitted from a lit, red stoplight hanging over a dark, deserted street to a healthy woman's eyes and nervous system, the stoplight and the woman are components of an information system . A person who wants to visually represent how this information is transmitted could make several drawings representing the physical structures in her eyes and nervous system -- specifically, the cones and her optic nerve-- that allow her to consciously recognize the color red. Each drawing would represent the state of the components of the system that produce and carry information at a different stages of time.

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