An area of matter and/or energy can exist as information if another entity, organism, or mechanism acknowledges it. Information can only be formed out of existing matter and/or energy. As Klaus Krippendorff, Professor of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania said, "Pure and unqualified information is an unwarranted abstraction." If all information is real, then an individual area of information can be identified by its qualities and properties, its relationship to other matter and/or energy or information, and its behavior.

If information is created or develops as different entities interact, then no information or carrier of information can exist in complete isolation. Likewise, if all information is made of an organization of moving matter and/or energy, no information can exist for a unique instant, or in a completely fixed state. Therefore, information marks at least one difference, or degree of difference among existing entities of matter and/or energy in both time and space.

Knowing what an area of information can potentially be is different than determining what an area of information actually is. For example, knowing what apples are is not the same thing as choosing apples for a pie-- you can't purposely select an apple for an apple pie if you don't know what it is. However, if you know what apples are and see a variety of fruit that shares apple characteristics, you can classify each piece as an apple, and also identify, differentiate, and subcategorize the fruit by other variable characteristics.

When a person studies an area of information, she can compare how she expects that information to behave to how it actually behaves. A person who knows about some of information's essential properties should be able to realize that all things carry information, know how to look for information, and recognize an area of information when she encounters it.

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