It is not by chance that information theory is almost exactly parallel to thermodynamic principles in basic form. Relative inefficiency of working systems due to heat loss is completely homologous to the principle of "noise" in informational systems--carrying capacity or channel capacity of an information transmission system is synonymous to the load or working efficiency of a energy train in an energy transmission system.

I will venture a basic rule--wherever we find the non-random organization of energy exchange within a system, we will find information, and wherever we find information, we can expect to find the non-random organization of energy occurring. So now the sixty thousand dollar question, what comes first, the information or the energy?

We may put this problem another way. Wherever we find in the physical universe energy that is being systematically trapped, transformed, transferred, stored, and organized in some kind of cyclical feedback process, in a manner that is in local violation of the laws of thermodynamics, we will find also in the organization of the system meaningful pattern we refer to as information. The information is of course implicit to the pattern of relationship that we read from the observation of the system itself. If the system may be said to contain "intrinsic" information, this is a form of structural patterning that is inherent to the semi-deterministic organization of the system itself.

I will further speculate that if we combine informational and energy paradigms in a systems based framework, we end up with a third systems-based paradigm that refers to the relational organization of events and things in interaction to one another. We may say that all organization is semi-self-deterministic to the extent that the reactions of one part of a system are the direct or indirect consequence of the previous actions or interactions of other parts of the system or of all parts of the system as a whole. We may say furthermore that just as we cannot have perfect energy conversion or 100 percent carrying capacity in informational systems, we cannot have a fully 100 percent determined system of organization. Relations occurring between parts of a system will be inherently variable and the outcomes not completely predictable.

We may break this into a paradigm of systems organization: 

Any system is a working, functional organization of energy, containing intrinsic information. 

The relations between components of a system are inherently variable and never exactly determined.

Any system is finite in the number of its components, the number of relations between its components, and in the combined size and distribution of its components over space and time. 

Any system must maintain a boundary mechanism that mediates energy relationships between the external environment of the system and the components of the system.

Emergent properties of the system are the behavioral properties of the system as a whole that is the product of the dynamic integration of the components of the system, in interaction to its environment.