Short answers, pulled from the story.
Information is the resolution of uncertainty that arises when a pattern is interpreted by a mind. It is not an intrinsic property of the object itself but a relationship between the object and the observer. Without an interpreter to assign meaning, the information remains dormant.
The scientific study of information was fundamentally established in the 1940s by Claude Shannon. His seminal paper published in 1948 introduced the concept of entropy as a measure of uncertainty and defined the bit as the fundamental unit of information. This work transformed the concept into a rigorous mathematical discipline.
The year 2002 marked a turning point in human history when the total capacity of digital storage surpassed that of analog storage for the first time. By 2007, the world's technological capacity to store information had grown to 295 exabytes. This figure represented an informational equivalent of almost 61 CD-ROMs for every person on Earth.
Gregory Bateson defined information as a difference that makes a difference. This definition emphasizes the role of context and meaning over mere quantity. It suggests that information is not a property of the object itself but a relationship between the object and the observer.
The black hole information paradox arises from the fact that the complete evaporation of a black hole into Hawking radiation leaves nothing except an expanding cloud of homogeneous particles. This results in the irrecoverability of any information about the matter that originally crossed the event horizon. The paradox violates both classical and quantum assertions against the ability to destroy information.