Claude Shannon on information: Entropy and surprise
What signals can you leave out without distorting content?
More surprise = more information (random data has maximum information content)
Cybernetics: Feedback is information about the past
Information can be seen as referring either to formativeness (having a formative impact on another thing) or to "aboutness" (communicating something about something else) (Hildebrandt)
Formative aspect often based on performative nature of certain speech acts