Information is Physical — a brief review of James Gleick’s “The Information”

Information is physical. “To do anything requires energy. To specify what is done requires information.” –Seth Lloyd (2006) c/o James Gleick

“The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood” released by First Vintage Books in March 2012, and written by James Gleick © 2011, will leave you exhilarated with the implications of information as a thing, and exhausted at understanding the implications of information as another dimension, much like length, width, and height. his highly acclaimed and best-selling author has probably forgotten more about this topic than this author is capable of restating, but his work is definitely worth a read.

For me, I was quite awakened to the understanding that the term itself is dynamic—notice “in – formation.” For us, the difference between ‘information’ and ‘data’ becomes apparent when you hyphenate the former. Then you see that the intent of the word is to capture the dynamic, the stuff that is in formation. The latter then represents the static, stuff that doesn’t necessarily change.

No wonder that the requirements and technology to support information, are never static and constantly changing. His discussion about the history and evolution towards the current state of quantum computing is remarkably clear yet simply challenging. Who can honestly explain teleportation cleanly and clearly to someone else? Yet most of us know and would agree with the Einsteinian equation “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Wikipedia

For me, particularly enjoyable was the chapter on Wikipedia, since it represents the true sense of digital collaboration. It also represents consensus, except for the disambiguations, or areas void of clear consensus.

From early Charles Babbage and “No Thought Can Perish” to the edit wars of Wikipedia if you are regularly engaged in the sphere of information technology, you will find Glieck’s book worthwhile at least, and at most, highly illuminating. After all, which is more accurate—is a human with a cat its “owner,” its “caregiver,” its “human companion,” or other? Or, to borrow liberally from Glieck’s painstaking research “factions fission into . . . the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn’t Mean They Are Deletionists.” (for real).

His Prologue of references and Bibliography alone are worthy of any library, including yours, if part of your life’s passion deals with information technology. 

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Related articles

• Alan Turing name-checks his predecessor Charles Babbage (wired.com)
• James Gleick: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (ritholtz.com)