Radical physicist pushes computer-centric view of universe

Physicist Stephen Wolfram took the stage this week at the Comdex Fall 2002 trade show, evangelizing a computing-centric view of the universe that might sit better with the technology industry than it has with some other audiences.

Mr. Wolfram believes the universe is composed not of particles and waves, but of simple tiny programs. He believes these myriad programs, or algorithms, give rise to physical phenomena as fundamental as space and as complicated as human beings.

Scientists accustomed to explaining the universe's workings through mathematical equations haven't always received Mr. Wolfram's ideas warmly. But the computer industry, whose inventions allowed Mr. Wolfram to develop his philosophy, could be an easier sell. Mr. Wolfram elevates the seemingly mechanistic computing tasks to the central role in the origin and functioning of the cosmos.

by Hanara via deoxy

Nothing should ever be given the power to hold us in fear. Things are the way they are right now for the same reason that they were 2,000 years ago, or 4.5 billion years ago. They ended up this way through the kaleidoscopic arrangement of an entire planetary life stream. It is another stage amidst infinite stages and we always live in our choice to see out, through, into, and beyond the circumstances that have our earth in the present stop-motion picture that is so easy to become lost in. Reality is happening through us, not outside of us, and the interesting souls behind the destruction are a piece of that reality which permeates us all. This situation, this moment, in all its scope; us, Bush, suburbia, Hussein, art, starving children, internet, music, space travel, psychedelics, war, and the struggle for peace... all of this is a blank canvas. It is our starting point every moment, with its challenges and its potential and its beauty, it is our beginning every time we look inward and then look around and see our imprint everywhere. It is THE learning structure, it is like... a mind, with its pit falls and its creativity, and most of all, its existence and the ever growing awareness of itself. Heart cannot be influenced by destruction, only the way we choose to view what we love can be influenced. And that must be ever striving for inclusiveness of it all.

:: po§ted by valis @ 23.11.02 :: §end :: ::

Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write - in fact your every memory and experience - into a surrogate brain that never forgets anything, New Scientist can reveal

We must discover new frontiers... People have been standing for centuries before a worm-eaten door, making pinholes in it with increasing ease. The time has come to kick it down, for it is only on the other side that everything begins." - Raoul Vaneigem

For those interested, deoxy keeps an excellent forum on the subjects of Novelty, Temporary Autonomous Zones, Spaceship Earth, The Poets of Chaos, Hyperspace, Omega, Incunabula , Shamanism, & Political Corrections.

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS 0. AND THEN THERE WAS 1. A MIND-BENDING MEDITATION ON THE TRANSCENDENT POWER OF DIGITAL COMPUTATION.

By Kevin Kelly

At today's rates of compression, you could download the entire 3 billion digits of your DNA onto about four CDs. That 3-gigabyte genome sequence represents the prime coding information of a human body — your life as numbers. Biology, that pulsating mass of plant and animal flesh, is conceived by science today as an information process. As computers keep shrinking, we can imagine our complex bodies being numerically condensed to the size of two tiny cells. These micro-memory devices are called the egg and sperm. They are packed with information.

That life might be information, as biologists propose, is far more intuitive than the corresponding idea that hard matter is information as well. When we bang a knee against a table leg, it sure doesn't feel like we knocked into information. But that's the idea many physicists are formulating.