Any piece of information is a selection from a set of possibilities. In this paper, this set is called a “domain”. Digital information consists of number sequences, which are selections from a domain. At present, these number sequences are defined contextually in a very variable way, which impairs their comparability. Therefore, global uniformly defined “domain vectors” (DVs), with a structure containing a “Uniform Locator” (“UL”), referred to as “UL plus number sequence”, are proposed. The “UL” is an efficient global pointer to the uniform online definition of the subsequent number sequence. DVs are globally defined, identified, comparable, and searchable by criteria which users can define online. In medicine, for example, patients, doctors, and medical specialists can define DVs online and can, therefore, form global criteria which are important for certain diagnoses. This allows for the immediate generation of precise diagnostic specific statistics of “similar medical cases”, in order to discern the best therapy. The introduction of a compact DV data structure may substantially improve the digital representation of medical information.

Any information is (transported as) a selection from an ordered set, which is the “domain” of the information. For example, any piece of digital information is a number sequence that represents such a selection. Its senders and receivers (with software) should know the format and domain of the number sequence in a uniform way worldwide. So far, this is not guaranteed. However, it can be guaranteed after the introduction of the new “Domain Vector” (DV) data structure: “UL plus number sequence”. Thereby “UL” is a “Uniform Locator”, which is an efficient global pointer to the machine-readable online definition of the number sequence. The online definition can be adapted to the application so that the DV represents the application-specific, reproducible features in a precise (one-to-one), comparable, and globally searchable manner. The systematic, nestable online definition of domains of digital information (number sequences) and the globally defined DV data structure have great technical potential and are recommended as a central focus of future computer science.

Information is physically measurable as a selection from a set of possibilities, the domain of information. This defines the term "information". The domain of the information must be known together reproducibly beforehand. As a practical consequence, digital information exchange can be made globally efficient, interoperable, and searchable to a large extent by online definition of application-optimized domains of information. There are even more far-reaching consequences for physics. The purpose of this article is to present prerequisites and possibilities for a physical approach that is consistent with the precise definition of information. This concerns not only the discretization of the sets of possible experimental results but also the order of their definition over time. The access to or comparison with the domain of information is more frequent, the earlier it was defined. The geometrical appearance of our space is apparently a delayed statistical consequence of a very frequent connection with the common primary domain of information.

Digital information consists of sequences of numbers. We can think of sequences of numbers as the building blocks of digital information. So far, these numbers and their domains are defined locally by context in very variable ways. However, we can define them globally in “Domain Vectors” or “DVs”: Each DV has the structure “UL plus sequence of numbers”, where “UL” is an efficient identifier and global pointer (link) to the online definition of the sequence of numbers. The machine-readable online definition contains all necessary information about the format and meaning of the numbers as well as a distance function for similarity search. In addition, it can provide much more, such as links and multilingual explanations. Worldwide, there is only one online definition for all DVs with the same UL. Not the definition, only the defined DVs are transported for information exchange. Their uniform identification by the UL makes them searchable. The online definition can be adapted to the application so that the important application-specific original information is reproduced one-to-one by the defined DV. The DV structure enables reproducible, efficient, and precisely searchable information transport in a language-independent manner for precise global communication. A global working group is recommended for the initiation and application of DVs.

Medicine is becoming more and more complex and humans can capture total medical knowledge only partially. For specific access a high resolution search engine is demonstrated, which allows besides conventional text search also search of precise quantitative data of medical findings, therapies and results. Users can define metric spaces (“Domain Spaces”, DSs) with all searchable quantitative data (“Domain Vectors”, DSs). An implementation of the search engine is online in http://numericsearch.com. In future medicine the doctor could make first a rough diagnosis and check which fine diagnostics (quantitative data) colleagues had collected in such a case. Then the doctor decides about fine diagnostics and results are sent (half automatically) to the search engine which filters a group of patients which best fits to these data. In this specific group variable therapies can be checked with associated therapeutic results, like in an individual scientific study for the current patient. The statistical (anonymous) results could be used for specific decision support. Reversely the therapeutic decision (in the best case with later results) could be used to enhance the collection of precise pseudonymous medical original data which is used for better and better statistical (anonymous) search results.