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The concept of information is central to several fields of research and professional practice. So many definitions have been put forward that complete inventory is unachievable while authors have failed to reach a consensus. In the face of the present impasse, innovative proposals could rouse information theorists to action, but literature surveys tend to emphasize the common traits of definitions. Reviewers are inclined to iron out originality in information models; thus the purpose of this paper is to discover the creativity of authors attempting to define the concept of information and to stimulate the progress of studies in this field.

Because the present inquiry could be influenced and distorted by personal criteria and opinions, the authors have adopted precise criteria and guidelines. It could be said the present approach approximates a statistical methodology.

The findings of this paper include (1) The authors found 32 original definitions of information which sometimes current surveys have overlooked. (2) The authors found a relation between information theories and advances in information technology. (3) Overall, the authors found that researchers take account of a wide variety of perspectives yet overlook the notion of information as used by computing practitioners such as electronic engineers and software developers.

The authors comment on some limitations of the procedure that was followed. Results 1 and 3 open up new possibilities for theoretical research in the information domain.

This is an attempt to conduct a bibliographical inquiry driven by objective and scientific criteria; its value lies in the fact that final report has not been influenced by personal choice or arbitrary viewpoints.

The training implications of the introduction of microprocessors was a major topic for discussion at a recent conference on microelectronics held for staff of the Food Drink and Tobacco ITB. Microprocessors are the tiny ‘chips’ of silicon which have the power and storage of the large computers of a few years ago. Their incorporation in both office and manufacturing machinery will have a major impact on all industries. Professor Tom Stonier, a leading expert on the social effects of micro‐electronics, predicted that there would be less emphasis placed on the value of capital and fertile land as resources:

The growth of information networks coupled to the emergence of intelligent databases and expert systems will not only profoundly affect our daily lives, particularly in areas of education and commerce, but will also begin to alter human society as it continues to develop a global central nervous system, including the equivalent of a global brain.

Future developments of computer systems will be handicapped not by the limitations of hardware, but by our lack of understanding of the human reasoning processes. The development of three‐dimensional chips, cryogenic superconducting, or optical systems — and in due course, biological computers — presages the emergence of generations of super information processors whose power will dwarf the present generation of devices as they, in turn, have dwarfed the capacity of the computers of the pre‐transistor age. The effective application of such powerful future computers will be limited by the lack of an adequate theoretical basis for the processing of information. Gordon Scarrott has championed the need for a ‘science of information’ which should investigate the ‘natural properties of information such as function, structure, dynamic behaviour and statistical features…’ Such an effort should ‘… lead to a conceptual framework to guide systems design.’

In the beginning, long before there had arisen a creature which could be considered as human, there existed both society and the environment. The society was a hominid society, derived from a more ancient primate form of social organisation. The environment, although variable, had always existed, and provided those selective pressures which determined the nature of this particular form of animal social organisation. The relationship between society and its environment is the most basic of all the relationships. It is animal. It is primal.

The paper seeks to outline an approach to a unified framework for understanding the concept of “information” in the physical, biological and human domains, and to see what links and interactions may be found between them. It also aims to re‐examine the information science discipline, with a view to locating it in a larger context, so as to reflect on the possibility that information science may not only draw from these other disciplines, but that its insights may contribute to them.

The paper takes the form of an extensive literature review and analysis, loosely based on the approaches of Stonier, Madden and Bates, and including analysis of both scientific and library/information literature.

The paper identifies the concept of information as being identified with organised complexity in the physical domain, with meaning in context in the biological domain, and with Kvanvig's concept of understanding in the human domain. The linking thread is laws of emergent self‐organised complexity, applicable in all domains. Argues that a unified perspective for the information sciences, based on Popperian ontology, may be derived, with the possibility of not merely drawing insights from physical and biological science, but also of contributing to them. Based on Hirst's educational philosophy, derives a definition for the information sciences around two poles: information science and library/information management.

This is the only paper to approach the subject in this way.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an appropriate symbolic representation, as well as its metaphorical interpretation, to illustrate the special role of information in the knowledge acquisition process.

Besides the literature review, this is a speculative study based on a symbolic and metaphorical point of view.

The proposed symbolic representation was derived from the conceptual designation of information “as a flow” and, accordingly, by the corresponding redrawing of the data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) pyramid. The knowledge acquisition process is symbolically represented by the growth of a “tree of knowledge” which is planted on a “data earth,” filled with “information sap” and lit by the rays of the “sun of the mind,” a new symbol of the concept of wisdom in the DIKW model. As indicated, a key concept of this metaphorical interpretation is the role of “information sap” which rises from the roots of the “tree of knowledge” to the top of the tree and it is recognized as an invisible link between “world of data” and “world of knowledge.” This concept is also proposed as a new symbolic representation of the DIKW model.

On the basis of specific symbolic-metaphorical representation, this paper provides a relatively new concept of information which may help bridge observed gaps in the understanding of information in various scientific fields, as well as in its understanding as an objective or subjective phenomenon.

Regarding the information society’s outcome, the only certainty is that there has been a revolution in the management of bit‐split knowledge and information. A flood of information has not significantly changed society in a direction or towards a state where a community could be characterized as a society of nearness, experience or citizenship, for example. Information and knowledge are probably the very concepts that have been confused most in the information society debate. Knowledge is to be understood as a phenomenon that is larger than information but uses information as its building material. Wisdom is additionally considered to include and cover the questions for which there are no unambiguous answers. It is wisdom that people use to estimate and distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. This is a task that calls for wisdom which computers do not have. Potential growth of wisdom in the information society is an issue that is difficult or impossible to say anything about with certainty. The reality of an information society includes the fact that wisdom is connected to moral and ethical judgements, and that the solutions are not always stronger than the powerseeking choices or egoistic interests of individuals, businesses, communities or states. Even if wisdom should promote the common good, it seems to be used, to an equal degree, to exclusively promote the good of the wise individual. But is it still wisdom we are talking about?

Alec Snobel suggests that our conservation programme may be too negative and calls for more emphasis on the development of alternative power sources.