Siti it's interesting you quoted whitehead.I think her definition is OK and I'm happy with that. Your position here seems to be that because we do not have a full account of what might ultimately be included in the "catalogue" of phenomena that are "physical" (i.e. amenable to explanation by a more complete physics) that consciousness will never be amenable to explanation by a more complete physics. We just don't know that. But we do know that there are claimed phenomena (like Jesus walking on water or the resurrection of the dead...etc.) that are forever beyond explanation by physics no matter how much more complete it may become. Its irrelevant to the discussion whether they really happened or not - there is (and can be) no physical explanation for them as real events no matter how complete the physics.
Its a bit disingenuous to suggest that because we cannot know all that the adjective 'physical' refers to at any given point it is not a useful adjective because there are very many phenomena that we can know that the adjective refers to. Think about other adjectives like 'red' or 'human' for example - is it possible to know precisely the limits of what those adjectives refer to at any given time? But that doesn't mean they are not useful in describing some of the uncountably many 'red' things there are or some of the uncountably many 'human' characteristics we might yet discover as a more complete account of what it means to be 'human' becomes available.
Anyway, all that apart, even if information were to turn out to be a "disembodied abstract entity" - we still have the problem of how we could possibly interact with it without the unquestionably 'physical apparatus' required to receive and interpret the information.
My best guess is to go with Whitehead's inextricably intertwined mental/physical bipolar explanation. There is, as far as I can see, no information (that we can possibly know about) that is not either embedded or encoded in a physical 'substrate' (although I suppose one could argue that it is the physical that is embedded in a mental substrate). It is a leap of faith to suggest that there will, under some scheme similar to this (Whiteheadian metaphysics), ultimately be a perfectly adequate physical account of how bits of mental/physical reality relate - many-to-many - to produce consciousness (and to say that is more or less what I mean by 'physicalism'). But, by the same token, I think its just as much a leap of faith to suggest that consciousness will forever remain beyond the explanatory power of physics on the grounds that we are currently ignorant of what a future physics might look like.
I am very fascinated how sharply he turned after the publication of Godels incompleteness theory. It was as if he was tracking as a mathematical reductionist, suddenly Godels theorm kicks him into exploring metaphysics. Russell the eternal reductionist just didn't think much of whiteheads shift but I find it fascinating.. I think he had a really good marriage and his wife played an important roll (freudian) in his life. Is there anything you can correct or add to my little bit of understanding.