Hi Akinbo,
Thanks for reading and for your gracious comments. I've observed that you always ask good questions!
1.) As I noted in an earlier essay, Eugenio Calabi in 1953 essentially asked if our Master equation was valid:
"Could there be gravity ... even if space is a vacuum totally devoid of matter?"
He reasoned: "...being non-linear, gravity can interact with itself and in the process create mass", and he conjectured, "curvature makes gravity without matter possible". The Calabi-Yau manifold confirms our Master equation-based only on gravity -but his conjecture was based on special geometry in which "time is frozen".
As I mentioned in technical notes, the uncharged electromagnetic field has energy, hence mass, but only interacts with charge, hence does not react with itself. The gravitomagnetic field energy has mass and interacts with mass, hence does interact with itself (in local motion). This has two consequences. The self-interaction vortex leads to soliton-like particles and the particles can be confined in a 'self-generated' field, hence achieving what is currently assigned to "color" in QCD. Thus the one field can interact with itself in a Yang-Mills gauge theory of mass. I would replace the "gluons" [which are considered to interact with themselves] by the C-field. In this case QCD has 10 extra parameters used to "fit" data.
2.) I'm pleased that you agree the threshold provides the real meaning of 'bit'.
The quantum analysis (which falls out of my master equation) leads to discreteness only for 'bound' systems. A free electron (say) has no well-defined properties (other than charge, which, in my theory results from binding the particle together.) When it is bound to a proton then it has discrete orbit-determined wavelength and energy. Thus a hydrogen atom can undergo structural change to record a 'bit' of information. Many higher levels of structure can be 'in'-formed.
3.) I will answer 3 in a later comment.
Finally you ask about gravitational action and action-at-a-distance. The first FQXi contest I participated in was "What's ultimately possible in physics?" I conclude my essay with:
"What is ultimately impossible is to explain gravity and consciousness; the essence of G and C (self-attraction, self-awareness, and ability to act) will forever remain mysterious. This defines the ultimate possibility of physics."
In other words, gravity, as the souce of action, matter, and awareness will always be a mystery. But it's behavior is describable, and it's self-evolution may be 'understood'. It's essence will never be understood. Newton was surely right to tread carefully there.
Thanks again. It's a pleasure to discuss these things with you.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
PS. As I have provided links to two earlier essays, I may as well provide the link to my last essay, The Nature of the Wave Function. In it I present a formulation that, in Geometric Algebra terms is a 'trivector', defined to have volume and orientation but not a fixed 'shape'. It occurs to me that this in some ways describes your 'monad' as an amorphous extended entity.