Information is a set of ordered and contextualized data that conveys one or more meanings, transforming raw data into useful and understandable knowledge.
The term "contextualized" provides meaning and is important in this definition. For example, the numerical sequence 19:30, with the colon, may be just data. But if you add the context of "arrival time," it becomes the information that "the flight will arrive at 19:30."
We know that one or more pieces of information need to be transmitted along a path to reach their destination. Think of a voice transmission via smartphone until another person understands what you are saying. I will present in numerical sequence something essential for this propagation, necessary for what is in the title of this text: matter and energy:
1. First, between the moment you think about what you are going to say and the moment the nerve impulses reach your vocal cords, many processes occur, such as the breakdown of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) molecules, matter, providing energy for cellular processes such as the entry and exit of sodium and potassium ions, matter, within neurons and then in axons, matter, being the nerve impulses. All this comes from the activity of millions of neurons that activate entire neural networks in different areas of the brain. For example, thinking about a car can activate neurons in the visual processing area (for the brand, color, etc.), in the memory area (to remember where you last saw it) and in the language area (for the name "car").
2. The impulses that reach the vocal cords, which are muscles, matter, make them vibrate, mechanical energy, and, activated by the air, matter, that comes out of the lungs, produce the sound of the voice. This sound is the sound energy of your voice, waves of compression and rarefaction of air, which reach the speaker, the material, of your smartphone.
Inside the speaker, these sound waves cause a small membrane, also made of matter, to vibrate. This vibration is a form of mechanical energy.
3. The vibration of the membrane in the microphone is converted into electrical signals, the electric current. This happens through a small transducer, which transforms the movement into a variation in electrical voltage.
Here we have electrons, matter, in a wire, also matter, with kinetic energy.
4. The electrical signal is processed and sent to the smartphone's transmitter. This transmitter converts the electrical energy of the electrons into electromagnetic waves (radio signals, "pure" energy), which travel through the air to a cell tower.
5. The cell tower, matter, and subsequently the second smartphone, receive the electromagnetic waves. The antenna, matter, in the second smartphone captures these waves and converts them back into electrical signals that reach the earpiece of the second smartphone. Inside the earpiece, a small speaker receives the electrical signal and makes its own membrane vibrate. This vibration generates sound waves that reach the second person's ear, allowing them to hear and understand the message.
From all that has been described, even without going into detail about the process of converting sound energy into nerve impulses in the ear, reaching the neurons of neural networks to be understood by the second person, so as not to tire you, the reader, energy, through material bodies and electromagnetic energy, changes form more than ten times and something is preserved: information.
Let's say you also want to transmit messages through television images, create your own program. You will have a microphone, radio transmission equipment, TV etc. Your smartphone will not necessarily be useful, but your listeners will be able to see you through them. More information will be conveyed in this system and listeners will begin to see various details that they did not see before: your face, clothes, scenery, your movements with papers on a table, etc. For this, there has been an increase in matter and energy with cameras involving electrical circuits, lenses, people filming, etc. It is very easy to imagine the superiority in complexity between just a voice transmission and one including images. These devices also transform photons of light from all around you into electrical impulses to be restored in the devices of millions or tens of millions of viewers' homes. It's a lot more information being transmitted within the system.
Honestly, I don't remember which book I came across that described voice transmission via radio, which I adapted for a smartphone. I invented the television myself. Perhaps it was from a book by the English artificial intelligence researcher, engineer, neurologist, sociologist, and psychiatrist, W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972), the title is Introduction to Cybernetics, but what matters most is the idea I memorized about how energy is transformed through material means while preserving the transmission and quality of information.
P.S.: In the two cases cited regarding information transmission, there was an increase in the systemic functional level, but not spontaneously, naturally.
Note:
(*) Systemic Functional Level
The Systemic Functional Level (SFL) would be a measure or degree of a system's functioning with respect to its complexity, given by the combination of matter, energy, and information. The amount of information generated, stored, transmitted, and processed by it has a greater "weight" than the other two "variables." For example, we have less mass than a lion, we expend less energy, but the amount of information processed by us, due to our brain, makes the SFL higher. Since we are dealing with complex systems, it is impossible to put all this into formulas, but it would be something like mass x energy x information; and it may be different.
