the.com/information theory

means The mathematical study of how information can be measured, compressed, stored, and transmitted reliably, even through noisy channels.

from The term crystallized with Claude Shannon's 1948 paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication,' written at Bell Labs — the word 'theory' here used in its rigorous scientific sense, not idle speculation. 'Information' comes from Latin informare, 'to give form to' or 'shape an idea in the mind.' Shannon's leap was to strip the word of meaning and feeling altogether, treating a message as pure probability — measured in 'bits,' a term reportedly suggested to him by colleague John Tukey as shorthand for 'binary digit.' The name stuck to a field that now underlies compression, cryptography, and nearly every signal sent down a wire.