Along with the technological expansion of the Information Age, the 20th century has also seen an expansion in our understanding of the nature of information. Through theoreticians such as Claude Shannon, humanity has begun to understand the fundamental relationship that appears to exist between language, information, energy, and entropy. A "physics of information" has begun to develop which suggests that information relationships are as important as material, causal ones mediated in space and time. Some cosmologists now look at the cosmos as a system of various kinds of information-processing, perhaps even an "infoverse." Thus, the Information Age marks a change in our worldview, as well as our technology. The mechanistic view of the Industrial Era is giving way to something new.
The thinkers who have best explored the metaphysical implications of this idea are neither mystics nor information scientists. Rather, they have been science fiction writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and Michael Moorcock. The essence of this mystical view could be summarized as follows: the universe is a living, self-evolving, multidimensional system. Where the flow of information is restricted and narrowed (closed systems), entropy and degeneration set in; within open systems which receive energy and information transfers from outside, "dissipative structures" actually expel entropy, raise improbability, and promote complexity); the importance of information is ultimately to make the universe self-aware and overcome its own inevitable entropic "heat death."
The concept of entropy came into physics with the second law of thermodynamics. It derives from the simple fact that heat tends to flow toward things which are less hot, until things reach equilibrium temperatures. Many people understand the concept of entropy to mean that everything in the universe is "running down." Engineers like to think of entropy as the amount of energy in a machine no longer available for useful work, which always increases over time. Although energy is never created or destroyed, it can be converted into less usable forms. For example, when you drive your car, the chemical energy contained within the gasoline is converted into kinetic energy in your tires. However, friction with the surface of the road changes that energy into heat, which the car can no longer use (and is released into the surrounding environment), and eventually you run out of gas. Entropy is the reason a perpetual motion machine cannot be built. Work, whether in machines or organisms, is always being converted into "useless" heat, which spreads out evenly over space.
However, from another point of view, entropy is also a measure of disorder and probability. (Disorder is always more probable than order; if you throw a bunch of legos into the air, it's highly likely they'll fall into a random pile, and very unlikely they'll land and arrange themselves into a house.) It may also be the basis of the "arrow of time." Heat is essentially the motion of molecules. The most likely state for the molecules of any substance are to be spread out evenly over space. The most improbable state is for them to be clustered into orderly arrangements (i.e. into matter.) Essentially, entropy is nothing more than the law that systems tend to move from states of improbable order to more probable disorder (I use the word "disorder" rather than chaos, for reasons I will discuss later.) The laws of physics suggest the universe must eventually fall into "heat death," with no stars, planets, or other aggregations of matter and energy - only a thin, featureless, totally at-equilibrium film of heat.
But the question must arise: if entropy exists, how come we observe any order whatsoever in the universe? Clearly, there must be a force counter to entropy which creates complexity or order. Some physicists call this "negentropy" or negative entropy. Some biologists see evolution as a negentropic force; however, most mechanistic biologists deny this because they claim there is no evidence that the complexity of organisms has increased over time. Some "simpler" organisms have a more "complex" genome than human beings. Theorists like Ilya Prigogine suggest that negentropy may actually be created by a form of "chaos" (i.e. nonlinear processes) -- "dissipative structures" such as the Zhabotinsky reaction, where chemical reactions actually raise their complexity by expelling entropy into the surrounding environment. Most importantly, through such processes, self-replicating structures (such as DNA), which are far from equilibrium, can come into being.
The physicist James Clerk Maxwell was the first to intuit that information might have something to do with entropy. He posited his famous Maxwell's demon as a thought experiment: could a tiny demon in a box, controlling a gate, force slower moving molecules into one side of the box, and move faster molecules into the other, thereby reducing entropy? Ultimately, Maxwell realized that there was a problem with his demon. In order to know which molecules were faster or slower, he would have to shine a flashlight on them. The very act of obtaining information about them would change their motion. So the demon was doomed to failure. But this was only true if the box was a closed system. Maxwell never bothered to consider that the demon might be able to transfer negentropy from outside the system. That information could actually be negentropic... after all, it's the knowledge that your mechanic has of what your car is supposed to be like, that enables him to keep it from falling apart: but only by adding new replacement parts from outside.
Bell Labs researcher Claude Shannon, in his theories of information and communication, helped complete the picture in the 20th century. Consider the realm of all possible messages from sender to receiver. The most probable messages are gibberish, totally disordered. A sensible message is more improbable. Shannon suggested that as a message is transmitted over time, its particular kind of entropy (what he called noise or unintelligibility) also increases. You can see this in the game "telephone," for example, where sentences become more and more meaningless as they pass from speaker to speaker. So how is it that human beings can make meaningful utterances at all? The existence of language, or more precisely a grammar or structure, makes this possible. Since both speaker and listener know certain rules of communication (protocols), the universe of all possible utterances is constrained. Each knows what the other couldn't possibly have said at all, which helps them figure out what they did say.
In a nutshell, Shannon noted certain features (such as redundancy) which reduce errors and occur in natural information systems (such as the genome or human languages.) Some of these same systems are used in today's electronic communications and media technologies to preserve the signal and reduce noise. What he and cyberneticist Norbert Wiener came to realize is that the relationship between information and entropy is as direct as that between matter and energy. If a system can be described by a certain number of statements, clearly a more ordered system requires more complex description than a more disordered system. Its information content is inversely related to entropy. And through communication or information exchange with other systems, an open system can raise its information content, and reduce its entropy. Through feedback from the environment, it can autocorrect errors and increase self-organization.
Ever since Maxwell and Boltzmann, physicists have begun to look at information as a fundamental quality of the universe, perhaps as fundamental as matter, energy, space, and time. Outside of information theory proper, the role of information is becoming clearer and clearer in quantum mechanics, biology, and neurology. Many quantum physicists now see photons and other "messenger particles" (which are essentially massless and timeless) as carriers of information, telling electrons and other particles what orbital shell they "belong" in. Biologists studying biocommunication have looked at such things as "biological clocks," which seem to "time" various cellular rhythms. The study of pheromones and hormones shows that organisms use many kinds of internal and external signaling systems. Some, like Robert O. Becker, even suggest that organic life has a fundamental electromagnetic basis, and that cells may function as a kind of information transceiver.
In neurology, the brain is now seen to be a dual information-processor. The right hemisphere processes information analogically and in parallel (all at once); the left hemisphere processes information digitally and serially (one bit at a time.) It seems like these two kinds of information seem to be the two kinds that make up the universe itself - continuously varying qualities (waves), and discretely varying quantities (quanta.) Other physicists now suggest that the universe is somehow made out of information - the "It from Bit" hypothesis of John Wheeler, or the idea that the fundamental particles are themselves made of continually varying cellular automata. Others utilize the holographic paradigm of David Bohm, who sees the universe as containing a certain kind of enfolded information which he calls the "implicate order." These theories lead to the idea that the universe might be a sort of giant computer or information processor.
This view may be found in the extreme version among people like Ed Fredkin, who sees the universe as a computer, the laws of physics as algorithms, and reality as a highly complex computational process. Fredkin's view becomes a bit more palatable if we realize that computers might be something else than the machines we know today. For one thing, in the future they might be more indistinguishable from what we call "organic systems." For another, they might process information through analog and holographic means, and not just digitally. "Emergence theory" suggests that a sufficiently complex computer might itself become self-aware, conscious, perhaps even alive, once it reaches a certain level of organization. If we think of the universe as an unbelievably complex (and improbable) computer, this view is not so ridiculous as one might think.
Returning to "info-biology," some "trans-Darwinian" evolutionary biologists are trying to smuggle teleology back into organic evolution. The issue ultimately revolves around the "central dogma" of neo-Darwinism and the "Weissman barrier." Essentially, that central dogma, the 'bulwark' against Lamarckian inheritance, is that organisms cannot store acquired information, therefore there is no inheritance of acquired characteristics, and thus no progressive evolution. Each generation is better adapted to the conditions of its current environment (once the 99% of unfit random mutations are eliminated through natural selection), but nothing more. However, the "central dogma" is being chipped away. It turns out the DNA-RNA information flow isn't one way, that the human genome is full of "metainformation" (i.e. information about itself and the location and sequence of genes), and that the environment (and perhaps the organism itself!) in some mysterious way may have some influence on the germ plasm after all.
The most audacious of these non-Darwinian evolutionists are starting to suggest that not only is biological evolution teleological, but it's not even restricted only to organisms. That is to say, the processes of evolution we see in organisms are subsets of universal processes of change going on throughout the entire cosmos. The whole universe is increasing its capacity to process information more efficiently, perhaps utilizing life and consciousness as its key tools. Organisms with nervous systems do this faster and more efficiently than ones without one, and conscious organisms who are self-aware and use language (i.e. human beings, although we are likely not the only beings in the universe with these properties) even moreso. The next phase of evolution - "autoevolution" (where humans start to directly control their own genome) may be beginning now.
The physics of information ultimately leads people into deeper questions, including the one raised originally - about eschatology or the fate of the universe. Some physicists suggest the universe has only two possible fates available to it, depending on the curvature constant of spacetime: continual expansion, in which case it will spread out into entropic heat death; or recollapse, into the Big Stop, which might possibly be the seed of a succeeding Big Bang. But this pondering of the fate of the universe doesn't take into account a third possibility. Some physicists like Frank Tipler suggest that at the last possible moment, all conscious life with unite into one "Omega Point" supermind, and place the cosmos under its control, annulling heat death. This viewpoint is the inverse of Deism, essentially postulating the Creator at the end of time rather than at the beginning.
Tipler's assumption is that various negentropic processes are actually driving the universe toward improbability - in this case, the most improbable thing imaginable, a Universal Mind. But one can take a sort of "weak" position with regard to Tiplerian theory, and merely state that the universe is becoming more and more self-aware (through the sense organisms of conscious life), and, as a result, a more self-organizing system, reducing its own entropy. (Whether it ever becomes totally self-aware can be left to the mystics.) That is to say, the universe isn't a box which requires a Maxwellian demon roaming about. The box is the demon, becoming more and more aware of what's inside of it, and also what's outside.
The other thing such theorizing about the end of the universe is that, as usual, it assumes the universe is a closed system. Einsteinian physics suggests that it is (sort of) - finite yet unbounded. But is our universe the only one? Or does it coexist with other parallel universes, cross-connected through space-time wormholes, in which case it's an open system capable of importing negentropy from outside? Further, the "heat death" prediction doesn't take chaos into account. As was suggested earlier, chaos is not the same thing as disorder. What physicists call chaos (nonlinear iterative processes) are in fact often descriptions of systems that obey nonequilibrium thermodynamics -- which is to say, they appear to be negentropic; and further, as the examinations of fractals and "strange attractors" show, chaos displays a bizarre sort of non-obvious, higher level order.
Following Teilhard de Chardin, a number of non-idealist "info-mystics" are suggesting that, while the universe is made of matter, it is evolving toward becoming pure information or pure mind (the noosphere). While the matter in the universe is falling into entropy, ultimately life and consciousness may be able to escape this fate by becoming forms of information which are material-independent, i.e. patterns of organization, and enter into hyperspace or other dimensions. I suggest that these mystics are non-idealist in that they subscribe to "emergence" - they don't see mind as prior to matter, but rather something which emerged out of matter and may eventually be able to leave its material substrate. It may be the "escape route" from entropy.
Ultimately, metaphysics always turns on the question of teleology or purpose and meaning. Infomysticism begins from the premise that there seem to be purposeful things about the universe - the curious constants which are the basis of the Strong Anthropological Cosmological Principle (the universe seems optimized for the emergence of conscious observers, which according to one interpretation of quantum mechanics, need to exist in order to collapse the universe's wave function.) But it tends toward pantheism, in that this is ultimately part of Universe's "Plan" to save itself from entropy, a fact of necessity and universal law rather than prior intention. The emergence of reproductive (self-replicating), reflexive (self-organizing), and then reflective (self-aware) systems, capable of preserving or even creating order, is part of this 'plan.'
In many mystical traditions, there is a critical dichotomy between flesh and spirit. The first is governed by machinelike, earthly passions and the second by the more subtle needs of the spiritual realm - transcendence. In the philosophical tradition of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, this is particularly heightened. The physical body is an automaton subject to blind, mechanical forces of nature, but the spiritual body (which does not exist at birth, maintains Gurdjieff, but instead can be brought into being) can attain autonomy and remove itself from the "law of accident." In ecospirituality, the dichotomy of the organic and mechanical is emphasized, with technology being associated with mechanicalness, artificiality, and a blind, purposeless worldview, and "wild nature" being seen as in fact the source of the regeneration of the spirit.
Many spiritual traditions still eschew technological techniques in favor of more "authentic" ones; so unassisted meditation is said to be better than use of mind machines, electronic biofeedback, or psychotropic chemicals, and the use of technology as a sign of attachment to "worldly" things or reliance on external crutches rather than "self-realization." Some of the "neo-Luddites" like Kirkpatrick Sale look to past spiritual teachers, such as St. Francis of Assisi, and Mahatma Gandhi, for their inspiration. And obviously there are many religious sects, such as the Amish or even some charismatic fundamentalists, who make the resistance to modernization, technology, and complexity a key part of their tradition. From the "infomystical" point of view, this conservatism makes them closed systems, doomed to entropic disappearance.
Like some Eastern traditions, what I'm calling techgnosis or infomysticism is different from these other dualistic philosophies. It is a monistic philosophy, which ultimately views flesh and spirit, organism and machine, nature and culture, genes and memes, as complementary forms of information within the vast mind of the Omniverse. From the techgnostic point of view, computers or other artificially generated beings could have "souls" and attain Enlightenment. "Soul" or life force or prana or whatever you want to call it is an emergent property of organisms, which could also appear in other complex systems, including "mechanical" ones. Techgnosis is also based on binarism, though, in that it sees all things that lead toward unity, interconnection, and evolution as good, and all things that lead toward disharmony, disconnection, and entropy as bad.
Like 1st-century Gnosis or certain kinds of Yoga, techgnosis is ultimately a path of knowledge, and so it doesn't see science or knowledge as the enemy of growth. The main techgnostic critique of Western science might be that it fails to realize or deal with the subtler aspects of matter and that it tends toward analysis and dissolution rather than synthesis and holism. Still, the emergence in the 20th century of synthetic viewpoints in science - chaos and catastrophe theory, systems theory, cybernetics, holarchy, ecology, etc. - suggests an opposite trend. Techgnostic authors like to point out the rather heretical origins of science - how people like Giordano Bruno, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and so on, were grounded in a Rosicrucian, Hermetic underground tradition which was "surfacing" in the 17th century. A Gnostic tradition hostile to organized religion, but not necessarily toward spirituality.
Ultimately, the Gnostic viewpoint is that knowledge of the universe leads to self-knowledge and thus Enlightenment. "As above, so below." Through knowing all aspects of the world, we come to know ourselves. The infomystical viewpoint is that this knowledge is part of the world-process itself talked about by Alfred North Whitehead and others: knowing is doing is the bringing forth of worlds. Self-liberation is merely the first step in the Magnum Opus of universal liberation. Human beings are not the only ones in the universe involved in this process; there are countless others, each at differing levels of consciousness. Ignorance, the refusal to consider new revelations, keeping focused only toward the past, eschewing technology and artifice, only lead to entropy, isolation, and death, physical and spiritual.
Although this provides the bare outlines of what can be called the techgnostic or infomystical worldview, it has so far left out one of its most critical elements: the idea of some prior "fall" or "disruption" which has left humankind cut off from the universal intercommunication, akin to the "shattering of vessels" described in the Hebrew Kabbalah. The best exponent of this viewpoint was Philip K. Dick, whose later writings suggested that at one point the Earth was part of some vast pan-galactic information network centered around Albemuth or Sirius, but that this connection was severed (for unknown reasons, although the time he gives for this event was the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE) and as a result, a "Black Iron Prison" descended around Earth. Finding the Earth cut off from the rest of the universe, the Sirians dispatched a satellite (VALIS) to try and pierce the noise blanketing the planet with a "divine invasion" of a pure, rational, restoring signal.
From the techgnostic viewpoint, isolated and closed systems must necessarily degenerate. Entropy sets in once they can no longer exchange matter, information, and energy with the rest of the universe. Human beings would do so quite rapidly if they weren't constantly taking in new matter from the environment; apparently we replace every molecule of substance in our bodies every seven years or so. Living organisms and ordered systems are ultimately whirlpools or vortices, patterns of organization which "suck in" new matter and energy all the time. They expel entropy into the environment (waste matter) but reduce it in themselves. (They can't do this forever; eventually multicellular life must succumb to entropy in the form of biological death.) But closed systems are entropic systems. Fundamentalisms block new ideas, closed societies block new innovations, and closed biotic communities block the introduction of new gene flows. They fall into entropy more rapidly than open systems.
Thus, the problem of theodicy or the existence of entropy becomes explained as a severing of communication. The goal of Earth is not merely to join all human minds into one Gaian planet-mind; it's ultimately to shatter the "Black Iron Prison" and rejoin this galactic network, reducing the entropic (Kali Yuga-like) state in which it's currently in. Dick even hints that this might mean the triumph over death. Some biologists think organisms acquire genetic errors throughout their lifetime (whether through "wear and tear" or some preprogramming or both), and that death results when the errors so overwhelm the "signal" or code of the organism that it can no longer maintain itself in dynamic homeostasis. The inability of the body to function shuts off blood to the brain, and thus the "code" of the personality or identity of the person is extinguished as well. Death is the extinguishing of information (but sexual reproduction and culture preserve some of it, in the form of genes and memes.)
Biological immortality would be very dangerous for the planet - if there was nowhere else for organisms to go, then the planet would quickly become overcrowded and swamped in biological waste products. But our planet, we know now, is not a closed system. There are other planets throughout the universe. Through space travel, humans have essentially eliminated one of nature's key rationales for mortality. And so, Dick and other science fiction writers have dared to suggest, possibly opened an avenue for overcoming it. Indeed, "panspermians" suggest that life is constantly being "seeded" throughout the universe by comets and meteors, and thus arises throughout the cosmos. Humans will become part of the panspermian process soon too, once we bring ourselves, the microorganisms that live within us, and other lifeforms to other worlds. Perhaps through "terraforming," lifeless worlds can be made to support life.
So, what are we to make of our current information age? Techgnostics would suggest this is just merely one stage of a key ongoing process. Nanotechnology opens the possibility that life may start taking more direct control over matter. Biotechnology, that we may start taking more control of our own genetic code. Neurobiology, that we may unravel the "brain code." And global internetworking (the Internet) may be part of a planetary effort to combat other entropic processes (global warming and other forces of ecological disruption) that this stage of life has set in motion. Ours seems to be a time of crisis and cataclysm, but from the viewpoint of complexity theory this is to be expected. Evolving systems are always "poised on the edge of disaster," far enough from equilibrium to evolve, but balanced enough to not fall over the edge into total disorganization.
The Techgnostics would say that this is all just the beginning of an important adventure for humans. Or whatever form of posthumanity it is that we're becoming or creating. Our role is not central; there are undoubtedly other forms of self-aware, intelligent life out there as well. But our role is critical for our planet as well as for ourselves. We are about to re-weave a "Universe Wide Web" of cosmic intercommunication. We may be on the verge of understanding our universe as an "infoverse" in which mind is a key force, rather than an accidental epiphenomenon. We are about to take a much larger role in a universal process we've only glimpsed through a glass darkly until now. A war against entropy and death, waged through the opening of heretofore sealed doors.
Return to CyberAnthropology