In this post, I want to remind readers that information is not abstract, it is something real and follows the laws of physics. Information theory talks about encoding information using predictable patterns, which have to be represented by some type of device. Such a device would typically use electrical energy in some form to represent each bit so it is no surprise that conservation of energy laws apply: that is creating one piece of information must destroy another.
Why does this matter? Information is finite and discovering one thing inevitably means that something else is either lost or in some way reduced in value. Anyone with a physics background might think of this as an extension on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
From a business management perspective, it means that the enterprise customer list cannot be used in an infinite number of ways without degenerating the value of the content. While intuitively true, I argue that it is also mathematically true, through the fact that applying information such as customer details also derives information about its application. Deriving information about its application must reduce information (significant or otherwise) from elsewhere. Usually, this reduction is significant – the process of finding out a customer needs a new service usually reduces the confidence in earlier analysis and limits the ability to target the same customer in other ways.
