Hi Edwin,
I very much enjoyed your essay. You wrote:
1. "Without the physical, there simply is no information. To argue otherwise one must show how a world with no physical reality can be brought into existence from information. Wheeler's remark "how to combine bits in fantastically large numbers to obtain what we call existence" was just unsupported fantasy."
I think the question is whether what we experience as "physical" is really better understood as "virtual". Is our "physical reality" an illusion? When we look out at the world, are we just seeing an immersive virtual illusion? We have the example (or analogy) of software agents in a virtual world. What they might "perceive" as "physical" we know to be "virtual", that is, just based on information. Are we in the same position, that everything we take as "real" is virtual and the ground of being is unobservable?
2. "It's been a Participatory Universe from the beginning."
I agree that is the simplest explanation.
While yours is an elegant bottom-up explanation for the cosmos, my essay Software Cosmos takes a top-down approach. While my starting point is very different, my picture does include a hyperspherical gravito-electric field (i.e. without boundary conditions) that may provide a venue for yours. You also may like the fact that I endorse Geometric Algebra and do not require Inflation in my model. Anyway, I hope you find some food for thought or a reference or two in there that will be of use to you.
Hugh
P.S. I have a copy of your Microprocessor Systems Design (vol II) still on my bookshelf, from my days of developing operating systems for new computer hardware. Chapter 7, which describes the construction of a floating point processor, is a remarkable account of how a higher order can be constructed from simpler parts. Consider that today's virtual worlds like Second Life, while implemented in software, are reliant on decent floating point calculations. We could say that conceiving and implementing the FPU design is where the physical world opens to the possibility of hosting a virtual world. You described that transition in 62 pages that are still enjoyable today as a reminder of the ineffable pleasure of seeing such possibilities open up.