Exformation

"Exformation is perpendicular to information. Exformation is what is rejected en route, before expression. Exformation is about the mental work we do in order to make what we want to say sayable. Exformation is the discarded information, everything we do not actually say but have in our heads when or before we say anything at all. Information is the measurable, demonstrable utterances as we actually come out with it. The number of bits or characters in what is actually said."

"Exformation is the history of a statement, information is the product of history. Both are meaningless without each other — information without exformation is empty talk; exformation without information is not exformation, but only thrown away information."

Tor Nørretranders

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"Some might argue that exformation is similar to tacit knowledge (Nonaka, 1994). Yet, unlike tacit knowledge, exformation does not exist as something we know but cannot tell (Nonaka, 1994). Instead, exformation describes a person's nondisclosed thoughts, values, and assumptions concerning a given situation or task, and thus we maintain that talking about exformation rather than about tacit knowledge has relevance." - Martina Sophia Lundin and Morten Thanning Vendelø

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"Exformation, in other words, is what is left out as information is formed from noise. As such, exformation is not simply absent but is something like a penumbral field from which information is formed." - Mark C. Taylor

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"...what communication theorists sometimes call exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.¹" - David Foster Wallace