The information is based on data brought by processing it. As the information is the primary object of the communication, it must achieve the following characteristics: relevance – the knowledge to provide the data which is missing in order to take the best decision; consistency – to be comprehensive enough to provide knowledge; accuracy – its contents reflect the real situation of the phenomenon; opportunity – to be provided in a timely fashion and accessibility – to be clear, easily to use.
The social development of activities that have as main object the transmission, recording or processing of the information in various ways has generated an unprecedented diversification of the nature of the information, along with the exponential growth in part of its volume. Such classification of information is necessary considering its form and its nature and structure.
The classification of the information according to its form (as I read on many Websites that deal with this kind of subject):
1. The analogue form of the information consists in the representation of physical phenomena, still images, sounds and images in motion as seen by technical recording devices, without being necessary their conversion or encoding before transmitting or storing the information on technical media. Examples of analog representation of the information: recording audio messages and other information on magnetic tape using analogue audio equipment (tape recorder, cassette) and a sound capture device (microphone); recording of images from some documents or filming the activities, operations, processes of images and sounds using analog equipment and VCR cameras.
2. The digital form of information is performed, either by a real phenomenon, or by its analog form, in both cases when there is a numeric coding, a quantitative assessment, quantification of the phenomenon that is the subject of the representations. On a technical media support, the information is represented as a sequence of binary values (0 and 1) ordered by a system of rules (code) and therefore inserted in the computing system and transmitted directly to memory.
The classification of the information according to its nature (also a list which I have seen it was present on many Websites that deal with this kind of data). The information can be as follows:
1. Data: alphabetic, numeric, alphanumeric.
2. Organized texts in the form of documents, pages of text, paragraphs, sentences, words and characters designed to be handled with appropriate programs for editing and typing the text, having grammatical and semantic control of words, and then placed inside the the pages in the form of written text .
3. Audio sequences generated by the human voice, phenomena of reality, musical instruments or electronic voice synthesizers and acoustics.
4. Graphic materials that may contain graphic representations, technical drawings or sketches, which can be seen on the computer screen, printed using the printer or by devices that create printed drawings, most of them being used by engineers for their large written projects, devices known as plotters.
5. Video sequences, that can be animated or even considered a film or a movie, which are accompanied most of the times by another type of information: the one created by voice – the sounds.
The classification of the information in terms of technical support used:
1. Technical devices: magnetic electronic device, magnetic tape, magnetic disk, floppy disk, magnetic card, optical media, optical discs whose information is read for example by laser optical devices.
2. Information found in graphics media: supports made of opaque materials, such as classical documents, documents obtained using a printer, documents produced by a drawing table (plotter) and media-devices made of transparent photographic-surface created for films or microfilms.
