Before we can understand information systems, we should ask what is information? What is a system? Information can be regarded as that which is happening in our brains: the questions we continuously ask—what, where, when, who—and the answers we get. A second approach is to consider information as something that our minds and hands produce, something we give to others. Information is something tangible that we construct from a state of consciousness. What you are reading here is information. It is a product of the thinking that made it possible. That thinking is also information—it is the process that made the product possible. Information includes what we write about in letters, the subjects we study in school, the things we read in newspapers, or watch on TV or film, and the numbers we find printed on our pay checks. Information is a material...