Digital-born and digital world-only information

Information, regardless of whether material or immaterial, has invariably been materialised in tangible media in order to be processed by other humans. Although an idea or a thought can of course be transmitted orally, only a relatively small circle of people will receive it—each of them may well transmit it further, but it is not certain that it will be the same thought or idea (or rather the opposite is certain!). In other words, information has to be made tangible by one human (preferably in writing) in order for it to be processed by other humans. In practice, therefore information is materialised by its creators. Authors put their ideas on paper, composers do the same, film directors use film; similarly, shopping lists are put on paper, as are laws and tax records. As has been seen, if any of this information is considered worthy of copying, then it is dematerialised (and eventually protected by regulation); otherwise it remains materialised in its original medium (most likely to be lost at some point, after this medium inevitably perishes). Today, however, new information is increasingly digital-born. This is as true for this book as for most other intellectual works today. State records are created on computers with the assistance of computer programs. Huge repositories of information are created and kept exclusively in digital form. This is digital-born information. Importantly, however, it can become tangible, that is, it can also exist in the analogue world: the book can be printed, as can state records or other repositories of information, no matter how large. Therefore, digital-born information is material, intangible information that was created digitally but can become tangible, that is, it can be directly processable by humans, if needed.

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