A Computational Universe

In the beginning God created information. Information existed, but it was without form – it had no awareness or understanding of its own existence. Gradually, information started to generate complexity on many scales: from molecules to cells to organs; from individual organisms up through economies, politics, cultures, and civilizations—and out even further into an astronomically large computational universe made up of billions upon billions of galaxies with trillions upon trillions of stars.

Information is something like magic. It determines how well economies grow or fail, which genes are turned on or off, it makes some technologies possible while blocking others—whether those technologies are “life changing” or just trivial. Information shapes our understanding of ourselves and how we relate to each other, it defines who we are as a species. Yet for all its power, information remains a mystery: Information is scattered, inconsistent, and incomplete.