The Information

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, is a book by James Gleick, that has an interesting idea. That everything, including matter and energy, is nothing more than just information. The author talked to NPR, the interview is embedded below.

While the idea itself is obviously interesting, that is not the only reason I posted this. There is this post that I wrote on this blog, back in 2002. The idea of that post is surprisingly similar to that conveyed in the book.

I imagined a universe where matter is defined as...

"nothing but the extract of the information conveyed to us by the various input devices."

Going further, one could define the entire universe, with all of its constituent parts using ...

"A way in which there is no difference between the various units of matter, energy, ideas, minds and everyother thing in the universe. This unified way of looking at the universe is going to help us define the entire universe on a one dimensional scale rating information content."

I am super kicked that my ramblings of 9 years ago were not that empty. In no way is this meant to claim that post was even remotely complete - but there was that germ of a thought.