The relation between matter and information is specified by information theory, which began when Shannon and Weaver defined information as the number of binary choices made between physical states [1] (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). One choice from two states is a bit of information, two choices is two bits, and so on. Eight bits, or a byte, is eight choices, so eight electronic on/off switches can store one byte, as a choice from 256 possible states. This lets us store one text character in a byte. Our kilobytes and megabytes of information are all based on the number of choices made between physical states.
Now if only physical states exist, all information depends on them, hence software can’t exist without hardware. The information we use is stored as choices between matter states so it needs matter to exist. Information comes from matter, so that matter also comes from information is like a daughter giving birth to her mother – impossible.
Note also that a choice of one state, or no choice at all, is zero bits, so what is one way only has no information in itself. This tells us that a physical book itself alone has no information because it is fixed one way. It seems wrong but it isn’t, as hieroglyphics no-one can read do indeed contain no information. Information only emerges from a book when it is read or decoded. This requires a decoding context, which for this text is the English language. Reading every 10th letter say, as in a code, gives entirely different information.
The decoding context of a physical signal is how many physical states it was chosen from. It defines how much information is sent, so one electronic pulse sent down a wire can represent one bit, or it can be one byte as ASCII “1”, or as the first word in a dictionary can be many bytes. Information isn’t just the physical signal, but also its decoding context. If it weren’t so, data compression couldn’t store the same data in a smaller signal, but it does, by better coding. In general, the information in a physical signal is undefined until its decoding context is defined. Hence, the transfer of information between a sender and receiver requires an agreed decoding context. The receiver can only extract the information a sender put in if they know the encoding context used.
Given the above definition of information, processing can be defined as the act of changing it by making new choices. Writing a book is then processing, as it can be written in many ways, and reading a book is also processing, as it can be read in many ways. Processing lets us save data in a physical state and reload it later, given a decoding context. Information stored in a matter state is then static, while processing as an activity is dynamic.
[1] Mathematically, Information I = Log2(N), for N choice options.