Information is the substance of knowledge based on available data. It is a way of organizing facts into a meaningful form that informs decisions about a subject. The process of information science involves finding a framework (the theory) about a topic and then working out how to fit the existing facts into the model. It is used not only in organizations but also in the home, village and small town level as well. With digitalization, information systems have become complex, making it necessary for people to take an active part in their own research.

Information, from a broad perspective, is structured, processed and organised data. It gives context to already existing data and allows decision making about future trends. For instance, a single customer’s sale in a particular restaurant is statistical data-it becomes information when the company is able to classify the most popular or least common dish. In the context of a large corporation, such as McDonald’s, the food preparation, marketing, research and development are all linked via an information management system (IMS), which produces, processes, and provides information about these activities.

The fourth aspect is called knowledge management. The concept behind this concept is that the accumulation of large amounts of information is inefficient because the human mind has a poor memory retention capacity. So, instead of trying to remember the details of a large number of discrete data, we make use of a more efficient tool, which is the memory chip. This memory chip stores the information in a structured manner so that the user can look at a series of images, sound or numerical data and understand them easily. The most common example of this concept is found in artificial intelligence, where decision-making tools are based on a digital signal that captures a large amount of data, and then the software uses this knowledge to make an informed decision.