What is Information? Twenty-second Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Diego, 2016 1 What is Information? Tiptoeing Towards The Philosophy of Information Systems Full paper John M. Artz, PhD The George Washington University jartz@gwu.edu Abstract The Philosophy of Information Systems should define the components of the field and how knowledge is developed, advanced and justified. This is a bold undertaking but begins with establishing a definition for information which can provide a foundation for further definition of the field. This paper addresses the question – What is Information – and, in doing so attempts to define a core component of the field. In order to do this, we must pull away from an established definition provided by Claude Shannon and see information in a broader context as anything which ‘informs’ us, or more spe cifically, helps form our internal conceptual models of reality. . Keywords Information, Philosophy of Information, Philosophy of Information Systems Introduction An earlier paper on the Philosophy of Information Systems (Artz, 2013) attempted what proved to be an absurdly ambitious task when it sketched out the essence of the field of Information Systems from a philosophical perspective. The rationale given for the ambitious undertaking was the necessity of providing a core to the field of Information Systems in order to preserve it in the face of rapid change in both technology and the evolution of ideas. Perhaps a more conservative and hence more reasonable approach would have been to create building blocks and bring those building blocks together at some point in the future. Those building blocks come from asking the following questions: 1) what is information?; 2) what is an information model?; 3) what is an information system?; and 4) how do we advance our knowledge of information systems in a rigorous, productive, and reliable manner? The purpose of this paper is to provide one of those building blocks by focusing on the question – What is Information? Background and Context Perhaps the main contribution of the earlier paper on the Philosophy of Information Systems was the focus it provided on what we mean by “The Philosophy of X”. The Philosophy of X covers a wide variety of fields. Some are familiar such as the philosophy of science, the philosophy of social science, and the philosophies of law, art and literature. Some are less familiar such as the philosophies of mind, religion or computer games. What constitutes the Philosophy of X can be summarized as follows: “This is to say that you need the philosophy of x to arrive at the contents of the fie ld, to describe how knowledge is developed and advanced, and how knowledge Is justified and/or validated. ” (Ibid. pg. 3) brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)