Characteristics of Digital Information

In the reference scenario, the student is seeking information (content) on beavers--a kind of animal. All information on the Internet is represented in bits--electronic strings of 1's and 0's that are later interpreted according to some algorithm to produce a representation that is meaningful to human beings. Digital information has properties very different from those of the information that a student might retrieve in a book. For purposes of this report, the salient aspects of this digital representation of information are the following:

• Reproducible. Unlike a physical book or photograph or analog audio recording, a digital information object can be copied infinitely many times, often without losing any fidelity or quality.
• Easily shared. Because information is easily copied, it is also easy to distribute at low cost. Digital information can be shared more easily than any type of analog information in the past. In the physical world, broadcasting information to groups has serious costs and hence requires a certain wherewithal and commitment. Technologies such as e-mail and Web sites allow broadcasting to many people at the touch of a single button.
• Flexible. A variety of different types of information can be represented digitally: images, movies, text, sound. Digital information can even be used to control movement in the physical world through digitally controlled actuators.
• Easily modified. Digital representations of information can be easily manipulated. It is trivial to modify an image--say, changing hair color from blond to red, adding a few notes to a musical score, or deleting and adding text to a document. So, for example, a naked body can be affixed to a head of a child, words modified from their original intent and music "borrowed" freely, and even virtual "people" created, all without leaving a visible trace of these manipulations.
• Difficult to intercept. Because no physical object is necessarily associated with a digital information object, interdiction of digital information is much more difficult than interdiction of a physical object carrying information. In other words, there is no book, no magazine, no photo that can be intercepted by physical means.