Information can be considered the ultimate resolution of uncertainty; it states both its nature and essence, what an entity is and therefore answers the question of what it is. However the concept of information is very different in many different contexts. The concept of information is often used to define knowledge or wisdom, where it can be used to prove a point (for example in politics, business, sports etc), in academic debate, in advertising, and also in the social sciences. It is also frequently used in management theory and decision making theories. But it can also be defined as that which governs the process by which information is accumulated and used to make informed decisions.

In its broadest sense information can be referred to anything that provides knowledge or information about a subject, whether this is an object idea, procedure, action or condition. In this broad sense however, information can also be referred to things that cannot be perceived, such as mathematics or engineering, as in etymology, mythology, science and technology. Thus in etymology information refers to anything associated with knowledge and in mythology information refers to anything related to knowledge. Thus in etymology information refers to anything that is of knowledge while in information the information is relative.

This brings us to the core of information theory, its definition. Information is said to be either a noun or a verb, and it denotes either an event or a non-causal input to produce a result. According to this concept knowledge is neither a noun or a verb, but depends on both a cause and a non-causal input. Causal inputs are events that drive a system towards its ends; non-causal inputs are things that affect the system without causing it to move, for example information, experience, opinions, aims or purposes.

Every causal input alters the state of affairs which are determined by the laws of physics and may cause the future to differ from the present. So we know that knowledge is not a verb, but an event and we know that there is no way to know what it will be in the future because we don't have any information to base our guesses on. To be able to grasp how qualia are related to quality, we must relate knowledge to qualify. In other words the physical information given by an external source, such as a computer, to the representations of knowledge in our brain. If there is a connection between the two then the changes that the information imparts to us can also be measured by means of qualia.

For example, say that I have learned a whole new language. I obtain a whole new set of qualia, for instance knowledge representations, according to which the new information is located. There are also new information concepts, which correspond to the knowledge representations. These concepts can themselves be measured, for example by means of qualia. But this is just the beginning, there is also a relation between the content of the knowledge representations, which may themselves be measured, and the nature of the physical information given out by the external source.

We shall see this more fully only at a higher level, when we come to address the issue of philosophy of information. For now it suffices to say that many philosophers have had a confused view of the relationship between quality and etymology. According to some, there is a fundamental relationship between these concepts, and others hold that they are independent. It has also been suggested that there are connections between the notions of knowledge and meaning, memory and pragmatics, and the notion of time.

However it should be noted that while some philosophers have maintained a clear-cut view, others have denied the very idea of information overload, or said that it is impossible to overload the mind with information. It is true that most modern people live lives filled with information, but this is simply not necessary in order to live well. In fact living well is possible, even easy, when one has access to a wide range of information, stored in different formats. At the other end of the same spectrum from the "information overloaded" person is the "information collector". The collector will try to keep track of everything, including the very information that she is trying to collect! In this sense she is a victim of information overload, as she has attempted to collect too much.

Of course this is the problem faced by most Knowledge Workers. They try to store as much information as possible, often in an unorganized fashion, but they are unable to process all that, and have neither the patience nor the skills needed to deal with the complexity of integrating and assimilating the knowledge they have collected. Knowledge workers' information overload can also be caused by having too many tools, applications, electronic documents, e-mail messages, faxes, photographs and so forth. These can also cause information overload, especially if they have not been sufficiently trained in how to use them.