{"id":990,"date":"2012-08-16T04:03:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T08:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com\/?p=990"},"modified":"2026-05-01T15:27:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T19:27:19","slug":"information-is-physical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/information-is-physical\/","title":{"rendered":"Information is Physical — a brief review of James Gleick’s “The Information”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Information is physical. \u201cTo do anything requires energy. To specify what is done requires information.\u201d –Seth Lloyd<\/a> (2006) c\/o James Gleick<\/a><\/h2>\n

\u201cThe Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood\u201d released by First Vintage Books<\/a> in March 2012, and written by James Gleick \u00a9 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, I was quite awakened to the understanding that the term itself is dynamic\u2014notice \u201cin \u2013 formation.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cIf you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.<\/em>\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Information<\/a>

The Information (a book by James Gleick)<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Wikipedia<\/h4>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

From early Charles Babbage and \u201cNo Thought Can Perish\u201d to the edit wars of Wikipedia if you are regularly engaged in the sphere of information technology, you will find Glieck\u2019s book worthwhile at least, and at most, highly illuminating. After all, which is more accurate\u2014is a human with a cat its \u201cowner,\u201d its \u201ccaregiver,” its \u201chuman companion,\u201d or other? Or, to borrow liberally from Glieck\u2019s painstaking research \u201cfactions 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\u2019t Mean They Are Deletionists.\u201d (for real).<\/span><\/p>\n

His Prologue of references and Bibliography alone are worthy of any library, including yours, if part of your life\u2019s passion deals with information technology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

______<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Don\u2019t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings<\/a>. Sign up for a workshop<\/a> or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH<\/span><\/a><\/em> workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.<\/span><\/p>\n

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