Many philosophers would in fact argue that information itself is an abstract notion with no physical parts. Our aim here is not to play at being futurists, but rather to point out the obvious. A university by its nature is concerned with information, its production and transmission, and the role of information in the conveyance and creation of knowledge. Plato defined knowledge as warranted true belief, and distinguished it sharply from mere opinion. Universities have a special role in the information economy, with their historic role of critically evaluating information with the aim of identifying structured information that can legitimately be called knowledge.
Universities provide both rational justification and social authentication as a basis for knowledge.
By contrast, there is a lot of information on the World Wide Web, but it is far from clear how much of it constitutes knowledge. Research, scholarship and the creative arts produce and organize information, and teaching transmits it. To teaching we add learning, understood in an active dimension, because a university-trained person must be an active participant in the processing and interpreting of information. Information is also collected and made available through such facilities as publications, databases, and libraries. Information technology goes beyond computers.