Dear Andrei, John, and colleagues,
The relationship between information and the material world was
correctly described, I believe, some ten years ago, by Rolf Landauer,
the chief scientist at the IBM Watson laboratory in New York. In several
seminal papers he insisted that all information is physical. In his
words, “Information is not a disembodied abstract entity; it is always
tied to a physical representation. It is represented by engraving on a
stone tablet, a spin, a charge, a hole in a punched card, a mark on
paper, or some other equivalent. This ties the handling of information
to all the possibilities and restrictions of our real physical world,
its laws of physics, and its storehouse of available parts.” (Physics
Letters A 217, 1996, p. 188.)
When information is exchanged between two objects, as in a measurement,
there is, necessarily, a transfer of some physical thing. I would note
that all physical objects are composed of quanta and all quanta carry
energy. So, according to Landauer, and many scientists who have read his
work, the correspondence of information with the experienced, physical
world is definite.
Cordially,
Michael Devereux
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