Data Processing:

The term data processing can apply to any process that converts data from one format to another, although data conversion would be the more logical and correct term. From this perspective, data processing becomes the process of converting information into data and also the converting of data back into information. The distinction is that conversion doesn't require a question (query) to be answered. For example, information in the form of a string of characters forming a sentence in English is converted or encoded from a keyboard's key-presses as represented by hardware-oriented integer codes into ASCII integer codes after which it may be more easily processed by a computer—not as merely raw, amorphous integer data, but as a meaningful character in a natural language's set of graphemes—and finally converted or decoded to be displayed as characters, represented by a font on the computer display. In that example we can see the stage-by-stage conversion of the presence of and then absence of electrical conductivity in the key-press and subsequent release at the keyboard from raw substantially-meaningless integer hardware-oriented data to evermore-meaningful information as the processing proceeds toward the human being.