game theory book: Osbourne ad Rubenstein

Once a person defines what information can potentially be (or not be), she needs to know how to define its potential conditions for existence. First, she has to determine how it can be situated in time and space.

A person who talks about how information is related to its surroundings, carrier, or source discusses that information in terms of the system that contains it. A system is defined by its components, their relationships to one another, and their interactions.

An information system exists when an entity contains information, or when two or more entities create information. Any 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.

A system's organization is determined by how its components are interrelated spatially, temporally, and behaviorally. To define an information system's organization, a person must be able to differentiate information in a system from the parts of the system that contain it. She can begin this process by identifying an area of information, which separates it from the system that contains it. Once a person identifies an area of information, she can attempt to define its properties and establish it's physical, functional, and behavioral relationships to elements and systems that surround it.

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