Gene,
I hadn't commented previously, as we have a significant conceptual difference, but after reading your exchange with Jonathan, I thought I'd make some effort to breach it.
As I see it, information is one side of an indivisible coin with energy. Energy is what manifests information and any expression of energy amounts to information. Frequency, amplitude, spectrum, force, velocity, even binary digits require some polarity of force to be expressed.
So there is no information without the energy to express it. No structure to the void.
Now what Jonathan argues is we need to maintain a child's appreciation for exploration and reserve the adult need to constantly frame, monetize, debate, judge, etc.
So what I would argue is that this reflects that dichotomy. The child is like energy, constantly expanding out, pushing the boundaries, even disrupting old orders and ways of thinking. Meanwhile the adult perspective is just that need to order, structure, judge that raw and undisciplined energy. Much like this dichotomy of energy and information.
Thus the bottom up childlike view is information is something to be tested, like water wearing stone. Meanwhile the top down adult view, is this energy is to be constrained and channeled, because obviously it is only as information and structure what it can be effectively put to use.
I could go on, especially in the ways this creates the effect of time, as energy pushes outward into the future, while information and the collection and ordering of which defines and creates this sense of the past, but I find this line of reasoning to be not particularly appreciated by most professionally minded people, so I would understand if you were to politely disagree and drop the subject.
Regards,
John M
