Christine,
Consider the concepts of energy and information. How they manifest and how they relate.
Essentially energy is what manifests information and information is what defines energy. They are like two sides of a coin in this regard, yet they are fundamentally different in the sense that energy is inherently dynamic and information is necessarily static. (Remember also that the root of information is form, so this isn't just a mental function, as mass is energy as form.)
So there is a profound tension here, since energy, being dynamic, is constantly changing form and thus creating new information and dissolving old information. Meanwhile form, being static, is consequently resistant to change. So the energy is pushing and breaking down form where it is weakest and or most vulnerable to the available energy, while the form effectively resists where it is most solid.
This creates the effect of time, as these configurations are in a constant state of flux, but also consider that galaxies, the most prominent features of the universe, are constantly radiating out energy and drawing in form and structure. You might say the arrow of time for the energy is outward and on to new forms and thus toward the future, while the arrow of time for the structure and form is being contracted inward and steadily radiating away energy, thus falling into the past.
Now as a more nuanced effect of this relationship, consider that novelty is that which is unpredictable. So what does the prediction? The information. And being stable and static, what does it predict? Usually more of the same, whatever that might be. Now yes, we can predict out current trends and often they are the ones with the momentum and thus energy, so they do tend to continue along their current trajectory. Yet often energy is accumulating in areas which are not yet structured and formed and any resulting information is then necessarily chaotic and it is difficult to effectively predict which direction it might go, or even if it all goes in any one direction, since this energy is probing and pushing against the structure, necessarily propelling it onward, but also will exploit weaknesses found and since this is likely to be some overlooked aspect and thus un-reenforced, it is therefore unpredictable by the established models.
Consider how this manifests in the political world, where control and exploitation of resources is the basic agenda, resulting in a state of punctuated equilibria, when you situations where chronic abuse creates enormous social pressures that then are released by seemingly trivial events that serve as a lit match to gasoline.
Even the act of propelling the form can elicit unpredictability, like a rocket spinning out of control, if some small deviation isn't corrected.
So the issue is not just the resulting novelty, but the inherent limits of information, since by its very nature, definition is limitation, as limitation is definition.
One could also describe our primal sense of awareness as an energy pushing outward, like a child exploring its world. While information is the form of the thought patterns which result and become ever more complex and dense, as ever more forms get incorporated into the store of knowledge of that elemental awareness. Now we only focus on those thoughts because they are static and thus storable. We are certainly quite aware as infants, yet we have no solid memories of this stage, because those forms haven't sufficiently stabilized. Yet like energy manifesting form, it is our awareness which manifests our thoughts, so simply reproducing the patterns of those ideas, doesn't then make them aware. So until they start manufacturing computers out of living cells, I doubt we will make truly aware devices.
Just an observation in passing.
Regards,
John Merryman
