Information Systems is the academic discipline concerned with the development, use, application and influence of information systems. An information system, following a definition of Langefors (e.g., see ), is a technologically implemented medium for recording, storing, and disseminating linguistic expressions, as well as for drawing conclusions from such expressions.
The technology used for implementing an information systems by no means has to be computer technology. A notebook in which one lists certain items of interest is, according to that definition, an information system. Likewise, there are computer applications that do not comply with this definition of information systems. Embedded systems are an example. A computer application that is integrated into clothing or even the human body does not generally deal with linguistic expressions. One could, however, try to generalize Langefors' definition such as to cover more recent developments.
Whether information systems actually deal with information depends upon the presupposed definition of 'information'. Presupposing the definition of information as a difference that makes a difference (e.g., see ) one could argue that information systems don't deal with information, as that what makes the difference is the particular understanding of a linguistic expression that is obtained by a user of an information system. In that line of argument one can say that information systems manage and maintain linguistic expressions, i.e., patterns that comply to a predefined message meta model. Information systems do that in a consistent way and that enables their users to associate metaphors with the maintained patterns. That finally makes the users of information systems capable of "making a difference", i.e., processing information.
