Information Is Selection—A Review of Basics Shows Substantial Potential for Improvement of Digital Information Representation

Abstract

Any piece of information is a selection from a set of possibilities. In this paper, this set is called a “domain”. Digital information consists of number sequences, which are selections from a domain. At present, these number sequences are defined contextually in a very variable way, which impairs their comparability. Therefore, global uniformly defined “domain vectors” (DVs), with a structure containing a “Uniform Locator” (“UL”), referred to as “UL plus number sequence”, are proposed. The “UL” is an efficient global pointer to the uniform online definition of the subsequent number sequence. DVs are globally defined, identified, comparable, and searchable by criteria which users can define online. In medicine, for example, patients, doctors, and medical specialists can define DVs online and can, therefore, form global criteria which are important for certain diagnoses. This allows for the immediate generation of precise diagnostic specific statistics of “similar medical cases”, in order to discern the best therapy. The introduction of a compact DV data structure may substantially improve the digital representation of medical information.

Reproducible Transport of Information

“…All digital data are sequences of numbers that represent a selection from a common set that is (or should be) known to all conversation participants. For the sake of brevity, this common set of possibilities is referred to as "domain" here and in other publications [3]-5], and we can summarize:…”

“…However, this is not reproducible, as shown in Section 1. For reproducible digital information transport, we have to define an adapted domain [3] for the respective application. All possibilities of the relevant original information ORGINFO must be contained in the adapted domain without redundancy so that there is a one-to-one correspondence between ORGINFO and its digital mapping DIGINFO.…”

“…Like all digital information, DIGINFO is a sequence of numbers. For its transport the new data structure "Domain Vector" or "DV" is introduced [3][6]:…”

“…Each (possibility of the) ordered feature is mapped bijectively or one to one to a (possibility of the) number. Finally, all relevant features [3] are globally reproducibly mapped to a sequence of numbers (DIGINFO). It's the part of the DV after the UL.…”

Internet since decades - but no globally searchable data

“…To overcome the limits of language, we have to recall the basics of information representation. As described in detail [1] [2], "information" always is represented as selection from a "domain" which is a "common set of possibilities" for sender and all receivers of information. Also the bits of digital information are parts of numbers which are selections.…”