Subjectivity Dispelled: Physical Views of Information and Informing

This study generalizes the notion of information beyond its traditional scope and, at the same time, reduces the concept of information to patterns of discrete physical states and informing to patterns of physical states being developed and spread among entities. In its ultimate elementary states, reality appears to be discrete, so would be its representation and its elementary changes. If so, states of digital computers could exactly represent states of segments of reality and their changes. This view removes ambiguities surrounding information and informing; it generalizes and renders them countable, with no recourse to probabilities; and it lays the foundation for their rigorous description, analysis, and synthesis, whether for operations or extension of knowledge. It discusses macro and micro views of information as physical states: (a) macro from the perspective of decision making as representing a change that causes a state transition of the situation, and (b) micro as transversal associations of elementary signals in communication channels. Subsequently, it dispels subjectivity of information and informing.