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فك شفرة الكون: كيف يفسر علم المعلومات الجديد كل شيء في الكون
يتشكلّ وعيُنا الإنساني كتراكُم لتطوّر التفاعل بين الإمكانات الموروثة في دماغنا البشري وبين بيئتها الاجتماعية، ويتجلّى هذا الوعي عبر وسيط يتمثّل في اللّغة. فبدون اللّغة ما كان لنا مراكمة هذا الوعي الذي بدأ بالسحر ولم ينته بأعقد النظريات العلمية مرورًا بالفلسفة والدين. كيف بدأ الكون والحياة وكيف سينتهيان؟ يبقى هذا السؤال المركّب مطروحًا حتّى اللحظة التي سينتهي فيها وجودنا كمخلوقات واعية على هذا الكوكب المنزوي في مجرّة ضمن ملايين المجرّات في هذه الأكوان اللامتناهية. ويبقى العلم، وحده، هو المسبار الموضوعي للإجابة عن هذا السؤال خلال رحلتنا لتفسير الظواهر الطبيعية، من انشطار الذرّة حتّى انقسام الخلية وتشكّل الكائنات الحيّة. لقد زعم الإنسان ـ دون سائر الكائنات الحية ومنذ فجر وعيه ـ أنّ هناك علاقة سببية بين وجوده وبين نشأة الكون. وتمثّل هذا الزعم في العديد من الروايات الأسطورية التي تبلورت في فلسفات وديانات أخذت على عاتقها الإجابة عن هذا السؤال الخاصّ بمعنى وجودنا وبالحياة وما بعدها.
320 pages, Paperback
First published February 2, 2006
83 people are currently reading
1,364 people want to read
About the author
Charles Seife
12books170followersCHARLES SEIFE is a Professor of Journalism at New York University. Formerly a journalist with Science magazine, has also written for New Scientist, Scientific American, The Economist, Science, Wired UK, The Sciences, and numerous other publications. He is the author of Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea, which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He holds an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and his areas of research include probability theory and artificial intelligence. He lives in Washington D.C.
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November 25, 2015
الكتاب للأمانة دون مستوى الطموح بشكل عام. فمعظم مواضيعه تم التطرق لها في الأدبيات العلمية بطريقة أفضل. أما فيما يتعلق علاقة العلوم بعلم أو نظرية المعلومات
information theory
فلم يوفق الكاتب في العديد من الفصول في تفسير النظريات العلمية عن طريق نظرية المعلومات، على الرغم من وجود ترابط وتناظر جليان بين علم المعلومات من جهة وبقية العلوم من جهة أخرى. كان تركيز الكاتب منصب على شرح النظريات والمفاهيم العلمية مع إهمال لموضوع الكتاب الأساسي وهو تفسير هذه النظريات بنظرية المعلومات.
ملاحظة: الترجمة سيئة وتستطيع أن تلاحظ أن المترجم ليست له علاقة بالعلوم. فكثير من المصطلحات العلمية في الكتاب ترجمت بطريقة غير علمية وغير احترافية.
ملاحظة أخرى: إذا لم تتعرف على أدبيات الفيزياء أو وجدت صعوبة في هضم محتوياتها. فهذا الكتاب مناسب لك. بشرط وجود الشغف في العلم.
information theory
فلم يوفق الكاتب في العديد من الفصول في تفسير النظريات العلمية عن طريق نظرية المعلومات، على الرغم من وجود ترابط وتناظر جليان بين علم المعلومات من جهة وبقية العلوم من جهة أخرى. كان تركيز الكاتب منصب على شرح النظريات والمفاهيم العلمية مع إهمال لموضوع الكتاب الأساسي وهو تفسير هذه النظريات بنظرية المعلومات.
ملاحظة: الترجمة سيئة وتستطيع أن تلاحظ أن المترجم ليست له علاقة بالعلوم. فكثير من المصطلحات العلمية في الكتاب ترجمت بطريقة غير علمية وغير احترافية.
ملاحظة أخرى: إذا لم تتعرف على أدبيات الفيزياء أو وجدت صعوبة في هضم محتوياتها. فهذا الكتاب مناسب لك. بشرط وجود الشغف في العلم.
January 22, 2009
I spotted this book in Readings, on the famous bargains table, and since I’d been trying to explain to a friend of mine the importance of information theory (and had made a complete dog’s breakfast of it) it became urgent that I read a book on this subject again to refresh my memory. My first taste of information theory was Grammatical Man by Jeremy Campbell � and what a joy that book was, pure magic. The only problem was that I read it probably 20 years ago and so my memory was hazy at best. And then here was a book, a book written recently, on the same topic and it looked like it would do the trick and even bring me up to date on the latest developments.
Unfortunately, I’ve struggled through this book and am a bit disappointed with it. I mean, it should be the book of the century, how did WW2 code breakers help invent a new science that may one day resolve the paradoxes between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? How could you fail to make that an interesting story?
Look, I know, when I say that this book is hard to read you are going to say, “Well, McCandless, if you are going to persist in reading books about entropy, relativity and quantum theory it probably is a little churlish to complain about difficulty�.
Well, actually, no. The fact these topics are innately difficult is no excuse. Books ought to be clear � even about quantum theory, and that is not too much to ask or expect. And he tries to be clear, he really does try. My problem with this book throughout was that he seemed to have trouble spotting the story or with keeping to the narrative. Far too often I was left a bit lost � even though I’m rather familiar with the subject matter.
I’m going to tell you about the things you should be on the look out for in science over the next few years � maybe decades.
The first is the Higgs Boson. This is the particle that is speculated to give matter its mass. This is, at least in part, the reason the Europeans have built a great big atom smasher � in the hope of finding the Higgs Boson. One of the things that finding this particle might just do (besides confirming the Standard Model of the Atom) is perhaps show some way to unifying our field theories. And that is the second thing that you might want to keep an eye out for. You see, we have two remarkably odd, but remarkably interesting theories about how the world works � Relativity for big and fast things and Quantum Theory for small and often cold things. The only problem is that although these two theories work remarkably well on their own turf, they don’t work at all well together. In fact, they sometimes say contradictory things. If someone comes up with a way to resolve those contradictions you might well want to know about it � it will be one of our greatest intellectual achievements. And in all probability it will be said by someone talking about information theory.
One of the other things you might want to know about is the EPR or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment. This is one of those things that are designed to drive you nuts about Quantum Theory, and something that justifies Bohr saying things like, “If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics you probably don’t�. But let’s take a short detour.
The big experiment in Quantum Mechanics is Young’s double-slit experiment. This is where you have a barrier that has two slits in it and a light source behind it. The light source shines on the barrier and the two slits allow light to pass through and strike a further wall. When the light from one of the slits interacts with the light from the other it will, depending on how far it has had to travel, form a series of patterns on the wall the light is shining onto. The waves will have either cancelled each other out or added together to make a series of light and dark bands. This is called an interference pattern and it was used by physicists for years to prove the wave nature of light. If light was particles you would expect to see two bright spots on the wall, not a series of light and dark patches.
Then Einstein proved that light was also a particle. And then scientists were able to send particles of light toward the Young double-slit experiment one at a time and that was when the terribly odd things that Quantum Mechanics is renowned for started to happen in all earnestness. You see, you should only get an interference pattern if there is a wave coming out of both slits, but if you are sending one particle of light at a time through the slits you shouldn’t get an interference pattern, as the single particle doesn’t have anything to interfer with (and I’m sure we all remember we should never interfer with ourselves). But the terribly strange thing is that even if you do send the light at the slits one photon at a time they still build up a pattern on the wall as if they were waves � waves going through both slits, rather than particles going through one slit at a time. Physicists explain this by saying that the particle has an undefined position as it moves towards the screen and so actually does go through both slits at once.
This is a little bit troubling, but don’t worry, it gets much worse. So, why don’t we try to trick this little particle? Why not put a detector on one of the slits and see which one the particle is actually going through. Well, as soon as you do that the experiment doesn’t work any more. Rather than getting an interference pattern you get two large bumps on the screen showing that the light particles have gone through the slits like particles and not like waves. If you don’t check they go through the slits like waves. Checking what light is up to makes a difference to how light behaves. If you are not troubled by that, I haven’t explained it as well as I should. Why should light behave differently depending on whether we are watching or not?
Quantum Mechanics is probably the most important scientific discovery of the last century. Without it there would be no TV, no computers, no fMRI, in fact, the list is almost endless. It is also deeply troubling in the sense that it plays around with our ideas of how the world ought to work. My favourite example of the importance of Quantum Mechanics over Classical Mechanics is that if it wasn’t for Quantum weirdness the sun wouldn’t shine, as the sun isn’t really big enough for the hydrogen particles to overcome their natural repulsive forces to enable fusion to occur without a bit of Quantum cheating. We owe much to Quantum Mechanics.
Einstein helped create Quantum Mechanics, but hated it. When he said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe he was talking about Quantum Mechanics, as it relies on probability theory, and Einstein didn’t like that. He also didn’t like that it contradicted things he put forward in his Theory of Relativity. In fact, he came up with the EPR thought experiment to try to prove Quantum Mechanics was internally inconsistent and that there needed to be a deeper reality that Quantum Mechanics was only hinting at. This is based on the strange fact that when two particles are formed in superposition they remain ‘entangled� (one is always opposite to the other once we check, except they are both the opposite characteristics until we check - just like the light particle before was a wave until we checked and then it became a particle). When we finally check their properties they snap out of being both to being only one of the opposite characteristics. The other particle also snaps out of being both properties to being the opposite of the particle we checked. Quantum Theory says that even the particles themselves cannot know what their own properties are prior to us checking and yet as soon as we check one particle’s properties the other must instantaniously become the opposite. But the two particles could be half a universe apart by this stage, so the information about what one of them is would need to have travelled to its twin particle at more than the speed of light. Which, frankly, ought to be impossible.
Einstein thought this experiment would by the clincher and would show Quantum Mechanics to be fundamentally wrong, but all it showed was (when the experiment could finally be preformed) that quantum reality is deeply strange � it has been confirmed that the information between the two particles does in fact travel faster than light. Einstein’s worst nightmare. This cannot be the end of the story, and we need a deeper understanding of how the universe works to make sense of this paradox of information travelling faster than light.
This book provides an introduction into how the paradoxes between relativity and quantum mechanics might be resolved � but it does so in a way that is anything but clear. The author seeks to be clear, but misses by not keeping his readers by the hand. His editor ought to have pulled all the stuff that was tangental to the story. And should have made more readible the important bits, particularly his section on quantum computers, which proved to be almost completely unreadable even though I was keenly interested to learn more.
If I find a better book on this stuff I’ll let you know.
Unfortunately, I’ve struggled through this book and am a bit disappointed with it. I mean, it should be the book of the century, how did WW2 code breakers help invent a new science that may one day resolve the paradoxes between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? How could you fail to make that an interesting story?
Look, I know, when I say that this book is hard to read you are going to say, “Well, McCandless, if you are going to persist in reading books about entropy, relativity and quantum theory it probably is a little churlish to complain about difficulty�.
Well, actually, no. The fact these topics are innately difficult is no excuse. Books ought to be clear � even about quantum theory, and that is not too much to ask or expect. And he tries to be clear, he really does try. My problem with this book throughout was that he seemed to have trouble spotting the story or with keeping to the narrative. Far too often I was left a bit lost � even though I’m rather familiar with the subject matter.
I’m going to tell you about the things you should be on the look out for in science over the next few years � maybe decades.
The first is the Higgs Boson. This is the particle that is speculated to give matter its mass. This is, at least in part, the reason the Europeans have built a great big atom smasher � in the hope of finding the Higgs Boson. One of the things that finding this particle might just do (besides confirming the Standard Model of the Atom) is perhaps show some way to unifying our field theories. And that is the second thing that you might want to keep an eye out for. You see, we have two remarkably odd, but remarkably interesting theories about how the world works � Relativity for big and fast things and Quantum Theory for small and often cold things. The only problem is that although these two theories work remarkably well on their own turf, they don’t work at all well together. In fact, they sometimes say contradictory things. If someone comes up with a way to resolve those contradictions you might well want to know about it � it will be one of our greatest intellectual achievements. And in all probability it will be said by someone talking about information theory.
One of the other things you might want to know about is the EPR or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment. This is one of those things that are designed to drive you nuts about Quantum Theory, and something that justifies Bohr saying things like, “If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics you probably don’t�. But let’s take a short detour.
The big experiment in Quantum Mechanics is Young’s double-slit experiment. This is where you have a barrier that has two slits in it and a light source behind it. The light source shines on the barrier and the two slits allow light to pass through and strike a further wall. When the light from one of the slits interacts with the light from the other it will, depending on how far it has had to travel, form a series of patterns on the wall the light is shining onto. The waves will have either cancelled each other out or added together to make a series of light and dark bands. This is called an interference pattern and it was used by physicists for years to prove the wave nature of light. If light was particles you would expect to see two bright spots on the wall, not a series of light and dark patches.
Then Einstein proved that light was also a particle. And then scientists were able to send particles of light toward the Young double-slit experiment one at a time and that was when the terribly odd things that Quantum Mechanics is renowned for started to happen in all earnestness. You see, you should only get an interference pattern if there is a wave coming out of both slits, but if you are sending one particle of light at a time through the slits you shouldn’t get an interference pattern, as the single particle doesn’t have anything to interfer with (and I’m sure we all remember we should never interfer with ourselves). But the terribly strange thing is that even if you do send the light at the slits one photon at a time they still build up a pattern on the wall as if they were waves � waves going through both slits, rather than particles going through one slit at a time. Physicists explain this by saying that the particle has an undefined position as it moves towards the screen and so actually does go through both slits at once.
This is a little bit troubling, but don’t worry, it gets much worse. So, why don’t we try to trick this little particle? Why not put a detector on one of the slits and see which one the particle is actually going through. Well, as soon as you do that the experiment doesn’t work any more. Rather than getting an interference pattern you get two large bumps on the screen showing that the light particles have gone through the slits like particles and not like waves. If you don’t check they go through the slits like waves. Checking what light is up to makes a difference to how light behaves. If you are not troubled by that, I haven’t explained it as well as I should. Why should light behave differently depending on whether we are watching or not?
Quantum Mechanics is probably the most important scientific discovery of the last century. Without it there would be no TV, no computers, no fMRI, in fact, the list is almost endless. It is also deeply troubling in the sense that it plays around with our ideas of how the world ought to work. My favourite example of the importance of Quantum Mechanics over Classical Mechanics is that if it wasn’t for Quantum weirdness the sun wouldn’t shine, as the sun isn’t really big enough for the hydrogen particles to overcome their natural repulsive forces to enable fusion to occur without a bit of Quantum cheating. We owe much to Quantum Mechanics.
Einstein helped create Quantum Mechanics, but hated it. When he said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe he was talking about Quantum Mechanics, as it relies on probability theory, and Einstein didn’t like that. He also didn’t like that it contradicted things he put forward in his Theory of Relativity. In fact, he came up with the EPR thought experiment to try to prove Quantum Mechanics was internally inconsistent and that there needed to be a deeper reality that Quantum Mechanics was only hinting at. This is based on the strange fact that when two particles are formed in superposition they remain ‘entangled� (one is always opposite to the other once we check, except they are both the opposite characteristics until we check - just like the light particle before was a wave until we checked and then it became a particle). When we finally check their properties they snap out of being both to being only one of the opposite characteristics. The other particle also snaps out of being both properties to being the opposite of the particle we checked. Quantum Theory says that even the particles themselves cannot know what their own properties are prior to us checking and yet as soon as we check one particle’s properties the other must instantaniously become the opposite. But the two particles could be half a universe apart by this stage, so the information about what one of them is would need to have travelled to its twin particle at more than the speed of light. Which, frankly, ought to be impossible.
Einstein thought this experiment would by the clincher and would show Quantum Mechanics to be fundamentally wrong, but all it showed was (when the experiment could finally be preformed) that quantum reality is deeply strange � it has been confirmed that the information between the two particles does in fact travel faster than light. Einstein’s worst nightmare. This cannot be the end of the story, and we need a deeper understanding of how the universe works to make sense of this paradox of information travelling faster than light.
This book provides an introduction into how the paradoxes between relativity and quantum mechanics might be resolved � but it does so in a way that is anything but clear. The author seeks to be clear, but misses by not keeping his readers by the hand. His editor ought to have pulled all the stuff that was tangental to the story. And should have made more readible the important bits, particularly his section on quantum computers, which proved to be almost completely unreadable even though I was keenly interested to learn more.
If I find a better book on this stuff I’ll let you know.
June 15, 2011
Seife gives the reader a sense of how looking through the lens of information theory can help in understanding some of the questions of current science, particularly modern physics and cosmology.
In the early part of the book he relates it to entropy, and not just the common way we think of entropy, that is, things going toward chaos, but to the another more specific underlying principle of entropy dealing with thermodynamics. You don't have to be a science type to read this book, but on the other hand, I was glad I already knew a bit about most of what he was writing about. Being familiar with some terminology and concepts made this a fun read. And, I liked that there were some things I'd read about before that he was able to define very succinctly.
He says that information is a fundamental property of the physical world, just like mass or energy. Apparently the math and various experiments show that as well. Thus, one can use this conceptual lens to look at questions that seem hard to solve.
It could be my own shortcoming, but one question I've never been able to answer is whether information has a subjective aspect to it. That is, we define something as information because we can perceive it, either with our senses or with our instruments or by somebody's math. But, does this bring us any closer to understanding the underlying reality of things than any other conceptual framework we come up with? I guess time will tell.
Meanwhile, this is a fun book to read if you want a new way of looking at some things in modern science like black holes, Schrodinger's cat, and other things.
In the early part of the book he relates it to entropy, and not just the common way we think of entropy, that is, things going toward chaos, but to the another more specific underlying principle of entropy dealing with thermodynamics. You don't have to be a science type to read this book, but on the other hand, I was glad I already knew a bit about most of what he was writing about. Being familiar with some terminology and concepts made this a fun read. And, I liked that there were some things I'd read about before that he was able to define very succinctly.
He says that information is a fundamental property of the physical world, just like mass or energy. Apparently the math and various experiments show that as well. Thus, one can use this conceptual lens to look at questions that seem hard to solve.
It could be my own shortcoming, but one question I've never been able to answer is whether information has a subjective aspect to it. That is, we define something as information because we can perceive it, either with our senses or with our instruments or by somebody's math. But, does this bring us any closer to understanding the underlying reality of things than any other conceptual framework we come up with? I guess time will tell.
Meanwhile, this is a fun book to read if you want a new way of looking at some things in modern science like black holes, Schrodinger's cat, and other things.
June 14, 2012
Information Theory for the average person at its best. Charles Seife clearly and concisely explains to readers how the universe is made up of pure information. In the process, he helps us to see where theoretical physics, biology and chemistry are pointing. Seife makes intricate scientific concepts understandable and interesting at the same time.
Chapter titles such as “Demons�, “Faster Than Light�, and “Quantum Information� ease readers into this fascinating world and occasional graphics help to illustrate certain points. Two appendices and a selected bibliography offer solid supporting information and avenues for further investigation. A detailed index makes for ease of book exploration.
Chapter titles such as “Demons�, “Faster Than Light�, and “Quantum Information� ease readers into this fascinating world and occasional graphics help to illustrate certain points. Two appendices and a selected bibliography offer solid supporting information and avenues for further investigation. A detailed index makes for ease of book exploration.
July 28, 2013
If you're less than a physicist but have the desire to expand your knowledge of science and universal information, this book for you.
Charles Seife does an excellent job of blending (many) scientists past and present works smoothly into only 9 chapters, while preparing the reader for the future of transitioning the world into the realities of modern day science.
Chapter 4 & 5 were the hardest to get through personally. At times it was written in a textbook fashion, yet every time I was ready to put the book down Seife brought back the witty charm that really made Decoding the Universe an easy read.
Quantum mechanics, the human brain, and the multiverse were the reasons I picked up this book. While none are explained in great depth, the author goes into enough detail to allow the average reader to grasp the basic concepts (without yawning) and be able to make the connection between all topics covered. A definite must read for the science enthusiast.
Charles Seife does an excellent job of blending (many) scientists past and present works smoothly into only 9 chapters, while preparing the reader for the future of transitioning the world into the realities of modern day science.
Chapter 4 & 5 were the hardest to get through personally. At times it was written in a textbook fashion, yet every time I was ready to put the book down Seife brought back the witty charm that really made Decoding the Universe an easy read.
Quantum mechanics, the human brain, and the multiverse were the reasons I picked up this book. While none are explained in great depth, the author goes into enough detail to allow the average reader to grasp the basic concepts (without yawning) and be able to make the connection between all topics covered. A definite must read for the science enthusiast.
April 19, 2015
لم اتخيل يوما انني قد اقرا "كتاب" علميا عن النظريات والقوانين التي يُعتقد انها تسير هذا الكون وافهم هذه الامور بسهولة،
لكن هذا المؤلف البارع والمبهر اثبت خطأ اعتقادي،
فقد شرح كل شيء ببساطة ولكنه استوفى كل شي عن كل شيء تقريبا،، النظرية النسبية، النظرية الكمية، مبدا عدم اليقين، الاكوان المتعددة،
انه مثال جيد لـ "كيف تحول المواد العلمية البحتة الى شيء سهل قابل للفهم"
صحيح اني كنت اعيد قراءة اي فكرة جديدة اكثر من خمسة مرات تقريبا، الا انني استمعت كثيرا اثناء قراءتي للكتاب،،،
لكن هذا المؤلف البارع والمبهر اثبت خطأ اعتقادي،
فقد شرح كل شيء ببساطة ولكنه استوفى كل شي عن كل شيء تقريبا،، النظرية النسبية، النظرية الكمية، مبدا عدم اليقين، الاكوان المتعددة،
انه مثال جيد لـ "كيف تحول المواد العلمية البحتة الى شيء سهل قابل للفهم"
صحيح اني كنت اعيد قراءة اي فكرة جديدة اكثر من خمسة مرات تقريبا، الا انني استمعت كثيرا اثناء قراءتي للكتاب،،،
February 27, 2024
"نظرية معلومات الكم - دراسة الكيوبتات - هي منطقة ملتهبة في الفيزياء حالياً. فعلى الجانب العملي، الكيوبتات يمكنها عمل أشياء لا يمكن للبتات الكلاسيكية عملها. الآلات التي تتعامل مع الكيوبتات الكمبيوترات الكمية، تستطيع القيام بأشياء يستحيل على الكمبيوترات الكلاسيكية القيام بها.
نظريَّاً فإنّ الكمبيوترات الكمية أقوى بكثير ممّا يمكن للكمبيوترات الكلاسيكية أن تكون عليه. إذا قمت ببناء واحد كبير بما يكفي سيكون بمقدورك تفكيك كلّ الشفرات على الإنترنت، كأنك تلهو بلعبة، ويمكنك التنصت على أي معاملة تجارية آمنة على الإنترنت.
تفكيك الشفرة، وسرقة أرقام كارت الائتمان والمعلومات الشخصية التي يجرى تبادلها، شيء يتجاوز مدى أفضل الكمبيوترات الفائقة في العالم.
وليس مصادفة أن وزارة الدفاع الأمريكية تولى اهتماماً بالغاً للتطوّرات في مجال الحوسبة الكمية quantum computing، وتعدّ القوّة الكامنة للحوسبة الكمية سبباً في أن منظري المعلومات الكمية يجدون صعوبات قليلة لتمويل أبحاثهم.
إلا أن التطبيقات العملية ليست هي السبب في اهتمام العديد من العلماء بالكمبيوترات الكمية: فهم يرون أن الحوسبة الكمية طريقة لفهم التناقضات الظاهرية لميكانيكا الكم". ص203
.
نظريَّاً فإنّ الكمبيوترات الكمية أقوى بكثير ممّا يمكن للكمبيوترات الكلاسيكية أن تكون عليه. إذا قمت ببناء واحد كبير بما يكفي سيكون بمقدورك تفكيك كلّ الشفرات على الإنترنت، كأنك تلهو بلعبة، ويمكنك التنصت على أي معاملة تجارية آمنة على الإنترنت.
تفكيك الشفرة، وسرقة أرقام كارت الائتمان والمعلومات الشخصية التي يجرى تبادلها، شيء يتجاوز مدى أفضل الكمبيوترات الفائقة في العالم.
وليس مصادفة أن وزارة الدفاع الأمريكية تولى اهتماماً بالغاً للتطوّرات في مجال الحوسبة الكمية quantum computing، وتعدّ القوّة الكامنة للحوسبة الكمية سبباً في أن منظري المعلومات الكمية يجدون صعوبات قليلة لتمويل أبحاثهم.
إلا أن التطبيقات العملية ليست هي السبب في اهتمام العديد من العلماء بالكمبيوترات الكمية: فهم يرون أن الحوسبة الكمية طريقة لفهم التناقضات الظاهرية لميكانيكا الكم". ص203
.
August 29, 2019
Interesting, but a little annoying
Seife begins with an introduction to information theory. He talks about redundancy and the relationship of entropy and probability to information. He recalls the work of Turing and Shannon. Then he reviews relativity as he leads us to quantum mechanics. He recalls the paradox of Schrodinger's cat and other peculiarities of QM.
In general what he tries to explain to the general reader is how science is reinvestigating the fundamentals of physics from the standpoint of information theory, which apparently is going to replace physics. If Seife is correct, professors of physics are going to become professors of information theory, if that hasn't already happened. To me replacing matter and energy with information is not helpful. But to physicists apparently it is not only helpful but something splendid.
Consequently, there is a kind of "gee whiz" quality to Seife's expression, a quality that I found somewhat off-putting. Enthusiasm is fine and the ready acceptance of new ideas is agreeable when the ideas have experimental backing. For example he writes (speaking of a hypothetical creature inside the event horizon of a black hole): "...no matter how hard it tried, the creature would be utterly unable to send us a message...The pull of the black hole is too strong. Even if there were a huge population of these creatures swirling around the black hole, all screaming and signaling as loud as they possibly could, Earth would never receive a single bit or qubit of information about them." (pp. 242-243)
Considering the physical conditions inside a black hole, the image of creatures "screaming and signaling" is absurd to say the least, and frankly ludicrous.
Also there is this from page 248: "Indeed, most cosmologists think that the universe is infinitely large...that it has no borders--and that it doesn't have a funky shape that curls around on itself, as a handful of scientists have unconvincingly argued. If you take a rocket ship and travel in one direction for years and years and years, you will never come across an uncrossable boundary and you will never revisit the place you set off from."
This is news to me. The universe is infinite? It used to be the case that the one thing that physicists wanted banished from their equations was any notion of infinity! All kinds of absurdities, paradoxes and incomprehensibles would pop up when infinities were allowed. Speaking of which, Seife also champions the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics over the standard Copenhagen interpretation put forward by Bohr and Heisenberg.
Personally, I've always liked the many worlds interpretation because it is so audacious and because it expands the mind so wonderfully. However, if, as Seife seems to imply, most physicists believe in the many worlds interpretation, I must say I am astounded. What is going on? The many worlds interpretation leads to parallel universes! universes that cannot be detected by any means we know of. They actually cannot be part of any real physics since there is no experimental method that allows us to search for or detect parallel universes.
Has physics come to this? Are the postmoderns right? Is physics now no more than a cultural construct that doesn't even care whether its theories are falsifiable or not? Are Newton and Einstein and James Clerk Maxwell rolling over in their graves? To me the "spooky action at a distance," and particles being in the same place at the same time, and the startling fact that an observation of any kind will always disturb a quantum event to an uncertainty, etc., is nowhere near as benumbing as the idea that a new universe is created with every tick of a quantum divergence. I mean I love it, but how can I believe it?
There's also a superficial quality to this book that is hard to get away from. It's as though Seife does not understand such things as entanglement and superposition well enough to explain them to the general reader. However he's not alone in this. Even the best books on QM for the general reader (e.g., The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone (2004) by Kenneth Ford), have left me feeling dissatisfied. Perhaps it is impossible to convey the reality of quantum mechanics to non-physicists. However, there is no excuse for falling into such an expression as this: "Parallel universes reveal how superposition works, and how distant entangled particles can instantly 'communicate' with each other over vast distances." (p. 242) This is like saying "vampires reveal how blood nourishes cells in the body." You start with a imaginary entity (a parallel universe, a vampire) and you conclude that this entity reveals something. Parallel universes may exist but nobody has seen one yet, and almost by definition nobody ever will, so it is specious to claim they reveal anything.
Here's yet another example of this sort of fuzzy writing to which Seife--a professor of journalism, by the way, and the author of the acclaimed Zero (2000) and Alpha and Omega (2003)--is inexplicable drawn: "The mysteries of quantum mechanics become much less mysterious--once you believe that information creates the structure of space and time." (p. 242) I have no idea how information might create the structure of space and time, and I certainly cannot comprehend how my belief in such a notion might make QM less mysterious. Seife really needs to explain how this might work. No doubt the failing is mine. However, I suspect I'm not alone.
Bottom line: this book is fun to read, but exasperating because of its fuzzy superficiality. The superficiality may be unavoidable, but the fuzziness is not.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is�
Seife begins with an introduction to information theory. He talks about redundancy and the relationship of entropy and probability to information. He recalls the work of Turing and Shannon. Then he reviews relativity as he leads us to quantum mechanics. He recalls the paradox of Schrodinger's cat and other peculiarities of QM.
In general what he tries to explain to the general reader is how science is reinvestigating the fundamentals of physics from the standpoint of information theory, which apparently is going to replace physics. If Seife is correct, professors of physics are going to become professors of information theory, if that hasn't already happened. To me replacing matter and energy with information is not helpful. But to physicists apparently it is not only helpful but something splendid.
Consequently, there is a kind of "gee whiz" quality to Seife's expression, a quality that I found somewhat off-putting. Enthusiasm is fine and the ready acceptance of new ideas is agreeable when the ideas have experimental backing. For example he writes (speaking of a hypothetical creature inside the event horizon of a black hole): "...no matter how hard it tried, the creature would be utterly unable to send us a message...The pull of the black hole is too strong. Even if there were a huge population of these creatures swirling around the black hole, all screaming and signaling as loud as they possibly could, Earth would never receive a single bit or qubit of information about them." (pp. 242-243)
Considering the physical conditions inside a black hole, the image of creatures "screaming and signaling" is absurd to say the least, and frankly ludicrous.
Also there is this from page 248: "Indeed, most cosmologists think that the universe is infinitely large...that it has no borders--and that it doesn't have a funky shape that curls around on itself, as a handful of scientists have unconvincingly argued. If you take a rocket ship and travel in one direction for years and years and years, you will never come across an uncrossable boundary and you will never revisit the place you set off from."
This is news to me. The universe is infinite? It used to be the case that the one thing that physicists wanted banished from their equations was any notion of infinity! All kinds of absurdities, paradoxes and incomprehensibles would pop up when infinities were allowed. Speaking of which, Seife also champions the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics over the standard Copenhagen interpretation put forward by Bohr and Heisenberg.
Personally, I've always liked the many worlds interpretation because it is so audacious and because it expands the mind so wonderfully. However, if, as Seife seems to imply, most physicists believe in the many worlds interpretation, I must say I am astounded. What is going on? The many worlds interpretation leads to parallel universes! universes that cannot be detected by any means we know of. They actually cannot be part of any real physics since there is no experimental method that allows us to search for or detect parallel universes.
Has physics come to this? Are the postmoderns right? Is physics now no more than a cultural construct that doesn't even care whether its theories are falsifiable or not? Are Newton and Einstein and James Clerk Maxwell rolling over in their graves? To me the "spooky action at a distance," and particles being in the same place at the same time, and the startling fact that an observation of any kind will always disturb a quantum event to an uncertainty, etc., is nowhere near as benumbing as the idea that a new universe is created with every tick of a quantum divergence. I mean I love it, but how can I believe it?
There's also a superficial quality to this book that is hard to get away from. It's as though Seife does not understand such things as entanglement and superposition well enough to explain them to the general reader. However he's not alone in this. Even the best books on QM for the general reader (e.g., The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone (2004) by Kenneth Ford), have left me feeling dissatisfied. Perhaps it is impossible to convey the reality of quantum mechanics to non-physicists. However, there is no excuse for falling into such an expression as this: "Parallel universes reveal how superposition works, and how distant entangled particles can instantly 'communicate' with each other over vast distances." (p. 242) This is like saying "vampires reveal how blood nourishes cells in the body." You start with a imaginary entity (a parallel universe, a vampire) and you conclude that this entity reveals something. Parallel universes may exist but nobody has seen one yet, and almost by definition nobody ever will, so it is specious to claim they reveal anything.
Here's yet another example of this sort of fuzzy writing to which Seife--a professor of journalism, by the way, and the author of the acclaimed Zero (2000) and Alpha and Omega (2003)--is inexplicable drawn: "The mysteries of quantum mechanics become much less mysterious--once you believe that information creates the structure of space and time." (p. 242) I have no idea how information might create the structure of space and time, and I certainly cannot comprehend how my belief in such a notion might make QM less mysterious. Seife really needs to explain how this might work. No doubt the failing is mine. However, I suspect I'm not alone.
Bottom line: this book is fun to read, but exasperating because of its fuzzy superficiality. The superficiality may be unavoidable, but the fuzziness is not.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is�
June 3, 2017
الانتروبيا هو سهم الزمن.
October 31, 2013
From a non-specialist perspective, I found Seife’s presentation remarkably engaging. Admittedly, when I purchased the book a few years back, I was unable to grasp enough to keep me going. Since then I’ve read other books that delved into Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Information Theory, wave-particle duality, entanglement, “spooky action at a distance,� among other abstract ideas in Physics. The authors� presentations in those books were down-to-earth enough to keep be engaged from cover to cover, which, I’m sure, made it possible for me to understand more deeply the physical dimension that is Information Theory. I agree with Seife’s assertion that the underpinning of this new science should be accorded the same reverence granted the other early 20th century discoveries in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. And the person key to this, Claude Shannon, should be accorded the same admiration given to Einstein and others instrumental in early 20th century discoveries.
The books premise is that Information is a physical characteristic of the matter and energy that surrounds us. In the book Seife outlines the generalities behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and shows how Information provides the missing link required to resolve the unsettling and notorious thought experiments imagined by Maxwell and Schrödinger. He presents the first understandable-to-me description of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and how the key to this uncertainty is embodied in the information property of the particle under study. In order to obtain knowledge about a particle’s momentum or position, the act of extracting the physical quantity that is information from the specimen is what makes it impossible to get other, accurate, complementary data about it. The knowledge gained comes from the changed state that is caused by the perturbation of extracting the information, i.e., the knowledge gained is of the particle after it’s been perturbed by the measurement, not the desired condition before it was measured. Therefore, the data obtained about a characteristic in which knowledge is desired will always be biased by the measurement to which it is subjected.
Prior to the revelations brought about by the understanding of Information, Maxwell’s Demon ran wild and rampant through the Physics community, mercilessly pitch-forking the inner recesses of the minds of many. This magical beast concocted within the thought experiment of James Maxwell Clerk was able to circumvent the Laws of Thermodynamics and reverse processes that were held to be irreversible. In essence, Maxwell’s demon was able to succeed where others failed and make a perpetual motion machine. But it was through the discovery that the needed information about the moving particles—their temperature—the demon was put in place to segregate cannot be had without an exchange. Energy must be employed by the demon to extract information about which molecule to allow through his imaginary, frictionless gate. And since this energy must come from somewhere within a perpetual motion machine’s reserves, and therefore cannot be allocated to bring the system back to its original state, the system cannot be perpetual, and will therefore cycle until it reaches a steady state, much like the plucked string of a guitar becomes silent not long after it is struck. (Since the demon was imaginary, he didn’t require energy, and since the gate was frictionless, no energy was required to open or close it.) Erwin Schrödinger’s thought-experiment cat was also rescued from the inconceivably simultaneous state of being alive whilst resting comfortably in death by the understanding revealed in Information Theory—truly a miracle!
The author does a good job of developing the relationship of the Thermodynamic property Entropy to Information. Entropy by itself is fairly easy to understand. We all have experience with it, regardless of any previous exposure to the mathematics of it while taking a science class. It is innate in all of us at a certain cutoff age the knowledge that a glass of spilled milk will never reconstitute itself back into the glass from which it came. Nor will a shattered cup ever consistently hold liquid again. How this relates to Information Theory is a little tricky to understand. If upon attempting this book you hit a road block, as I did, my suggestion is to first read James Gleick’s book about the same subject. In it he spends more time developing the flavor of what Information is, and does so in a way that I suspect would be intuitive for most. That’s not to say that Seife’s book doesn’t contain a writing style that is very understandable. It contains the necessary, if not sufficient for some (myself included not too long ago), scaffolding needed to make the connections required to appreciate the impact of Information.
The books premise is that Information is a physical characteristic of the matter and energy that surrounds us. In the book Seife outlines the generalities behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and shows how Information provides the missing link required to resolve the unsettling and notorious thought experiments imagined by Maxwell and Schrödinger. He presents the first understandable-to-me description of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and how the key to this uncertainty is embodied in the information property of the particle under study. In order to obtain knowledge about a particle’s momentum or position, the act of extracting the physical quantity that is information from the specimen is what makes it impossible to get other, accurate, complementary data about it. The knowledge gained comes from the changed state that is caused by the perturbation of extracting the information, i.e., the knowledge gained is of the particle after it’s been perturbed by the measurement, not the desired condition before it was measured. Therefore, the data obtained about a characteristic in which knowledge is desired will always be biased by the measurement to which it is subjected.
Prior to the revelations brought about by the understanding of Information, Maxwell’s Demon ran wild and rampant through the Physics community, mercilessly pitch-forking the inner recesses of the minds of many. This magical beast concocted within the thought experiment of James Maxwell Clerk was able to circumvent the Laws of Thermodynamics and reverse processes that were held to be irreversible. In essence, Maxwell’s demon was able to succeed where others failed and make a perpetual motion machine. But it was through the discovery that the needed information about the moving particles—their temperature—the demon was put in place to segregate cannot be had without an exchange. Energy must be employed by the demon to extract information about which molecule to allow through his imaginary, frictionless gate. And since this energy must come from somewhere within a perpetual motion machine’s reserves, and therefore cannot be allocated to bring the system back to its original state, the system cannot be perpetual, and will therefore cycle until it reaches a steady state, much like the plucked string of a guitar becomes silent not long after it is struck. (Since the demon was imaginary, he didn’t require energy, and since the gate was frictionless, no energy was required to open or close it.) Erwin Schrödinger’s thought-experiment cat was also rescued from the inconceivably simultaneous state of being alive whilst resting comfortably in death by the understanding revealed in Information Theory—truly a miracle!
The author does a good job of developing the relationship of the Thermodynamic property Entropy to Information. Entropy by itself is fairly easy to understand. We all have experience with it, regardless of any previous exposure to the mathematics of it while taking a science class. It is innate in all of us at a certain cutoff age the knowledge that a glass of spilled milk will never reconstitute itself back into the glass from which it came. Nor will a shattered cup ever consistently hold liquid again. How this relates to Information Theory is a little tricky to understand. If upon attempting this book you hit a road block, as I did, my suggestion is to first read James Gleick’s book about the same subject. In it he spends more time developing the flavor of what Information is, and does so in a way that I suspect would be intuitive for most. That’s not to say that Seife’s book doesn’t contain a writing style that is very understandable. It contains the necessary, if not sufficient for some (myself included not too long ago), scaffolding needed to make the connections required to appreciate the impact of Information.
December 28, 2014
Information Theory is hard to wrap your head around. There are many ways to communicate: you can say your message in your language, you can draw a picture, perform a dance, sing a song, but what happens if your intended audience isn't next to you? Well, you can send an e-mail, or send smoke signals, break out your telegraph machine, or dare I say it? Write a letter! All of these modes of communication send the same message, and yet they do it in very different ways. Speaking in your language involves transferring precise vibrations through the air so that your audience can use their sense of hearing to reconstruct the message. When you draw your message your audience needs to use their sense of sight to reconstruct the image. An e-mail transmits your key clattering into ones and zeros and sends them through a series of wires to a server that then reconstructs your message back into your language so that your audience can read it.
Okay, Okay, you get the picture. There are many different ways to communicate, but is there some underlying principle that ties all of these methods of communication together? Aren't you trying to transmit the same message? Just like atoms are the fundamental building block of matter (yes an oversimplification...), information can be broken down into fundamental units, and these units are known as bits. All of the methods we used above to transmit a message (say, "Hello!") send the same amount of information, "the Hello", but use different methods for communicating it. "Hello" can be broken down into bits, and all of those methods are sending the same amount of bits!
This is a huge theoretical hurdle to step over. What we have to acknowledge is that information IS SOMETHING. The example that Charles Seife used in his book that made the most sense to me was the idea of transmitting telephone conversations across the Atlantic via cable. Is there a limit to how many messages can be transmitted? Of course, we cannot send infinite messages! But, why? This seemingly superficial question has deep implications and it is supposedly the kind of question that the inventor of Information Theory, Claude Shannon, was mulling over when he started etching out the mathematical principles of the theory. Why can't we send infinite messages? Well because messages are something! In this example they are electricity, we can't send infinite electricity in a wire, we can't even have infinite electricity! So, how much electricity can be sent through a wire that is 1000 miles long and 20 cm thick? How many messages can be sent in this amount of electricity? Does the density of messages per electricity cause interference and make them harder to reconstruct on the other side? If so, we aren't sending information!
Yeah, I know it's kind of crazy to think about. Decoding the Universe is a lively introduction to this theory, that tackles the implications of this subject from molecular biology and black hole astrophysics. It was a quick and enjoyable read that introduces many cool and interesting theories in a compulsively readable way. Unfortunately, I would have liked it if Mr. Seife had spent more time explaining the fundamental principles behind the theory and less time talking about how it might be related to physical theories. Because I had to accept on faith alone that information is equivalent to thermodynamic entropy, much of the deeper implications of the theory were lost to me. That's not to say that I couldn't get through the rest of the book, indeed Mr. Seife's writing is so lucid that I was able to plow through it and understand most of the concepts. It's just that I would have liked a more intensive treatment of the subject matter in chapter 2. Anywho, I find the subject fascinating and will definitely be reading more about it in the future. I would be inclined to visit more of Mr. Seife's books because he is an excellent science writer.
Okay, Okay, you get the picture. There are many different ways to communicate, but is there some underlying principle that ties all of these methods of communication together? Aren't you trying to transmit the same message? Just like atoms are the fundamental building block of matter (yes an oversimplification...), information can be broken down into fundamental units, and these units are known as bits. All of the methods we used above to transmit a message (say, "Hello!") send the same amount of information, "the Hello", but use different methods for communicating it. "Hello" can be broken down into bits, and all of those methods are sending the same amount of bits!
This is a huge theoretical hurdle to step over. What we have to acknowledge is that information IS SOMETHING. The example that Charles Seife used in his book that made the most sense to me was the idea of transmitting telephone conversations across the Atlantic via cable. Is there a limit to how many messages can be transmitted? Of course, we cannot send infinite messages! But, why? This seemingly superficial question has deep implications and it is supposedly the kind of question that the inventor of Information Theory, Claude Shannon, was mulling over when he started etching out the mathematical principles of the theory. Why can't we send infinite messages? Well because messages are something! In this example they are electricity, we can't send infinite electricity in a wire, we can't even have infinite electricity! So, how much electricity can be sent through a wire that is 1000 miles long and 20 cm thick? How many messages can be sent in this amount of electricity? Does the density of messages per electricity cause interference and make them harder to reconstruct on the other side? If so, we aren't sending information!
Yeah, I know it's kind of crazy to think about. Decoding the Universe is a lively introduction to this theory, that tackles the implications of this subject from molecular biology and black hole astrophysics. It was a quick and enjoyable read that introduces many cool and interesting theories in a compulsively readable way. Unfortunately, I would have liked it if Mr. Seife had spent more time explaining the fundamental principles behind the theory and less time talking about how it might be related to physical theories. Because I had to accept on faith alone that information is equivalent to thermodynamic entropy, much of the deeper implications of the theory were lost to me. That's not to say that I couldn't get through the rest of the book, indeed Mr. Seife's writing is so lucid that I was able to plow through it and understand most of the concepts. It's just that I would have liked a more intensive treatment of the subject matter in chapter 2. Anywho, I find the subject fascinating and will definitely be reading more about it in the future. I would be inclined to visit more of Mr. Seife's books because he is an excellent science writer.
January 30, 2010
This is the fourth or fifth book that I have read by Charles Seife. I liked the others so much that I have deliberately spaced out reading more of his work to "savor" the experience when I do pick another up.
First off, this book is very well written, researched and organized. It presents a tricky and important topic with clear exposition, excellent examples and morsels of humor, much like his other works (although perhaps with a greater dollop of wit). If you simply like a great book on any topic, just grab a copy and read it now!
Salon.com is quoted on the cover as saying, "For the former liberal arts major and other right-brainers, Seife is the man." I agree that Seife takes intricate, difficult topics and concepts and presents them in a lucid and understandable manner. This book probably best exemplifies the quote as pretty much all formulae and the "hard" parts of "hard science" are translated into easy-to-read text. Whether or not the average right-brainer will follow all of the reasoning and points is not for me to say.
In my own professional work I deal with some of the science parts that Seife has written about (including information theory), but as an implementer, not as a researcher. That is why I try to find authors covering material that I want to know about, but haven't the opportunity to do the basic research on. Charles Seife is one of the best at this.
I count myself lucky that prior to picking up "Decoding the Universe", I read a couple of books on codes and cryptography (very interesting and very, very detailed) and Walter Issacson's biography of Albert Einstein: "Einstein: His Life and Universe". Everyone "knows" that Einstein created the theory (ies, actually) of Relativity, but most are unaware of his seminal contributions to the establishment and development of Quantum Theory and Mechanics. He was and in deep and surprising ways. (Another book I've recommended and reviwed.)
Prior knowledge of these theories is not essential for enjoying Seife's book, but knowing how they were developed and how they impacted Physics, War, and the World give one a far better appreciation for their importance and how Information Theory actually addresses many of the issues raised by Quantum Theory (and troubled Einstein for the last 30-odd years of his life.)
Seife makes a strong argument that Information Theory is the third major revolution in physics of the 20th century, after Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Although parts of the "solutions" personally trouble the author, he gives the reader all of the facts and theories that are shaping scientists and theorists understanding of the world and the cosmos. Pick it up and judeg for yourself!
First off, this book is very well written, researched and organized. It presents a tricky and important topic with clear exposition, excellent examples and morsels of humor, much like his other works (although perhaps with a greater dollop of wit). If you simply like a great book on any topic, just grab a copy and read it now!
Salon.com is quoted on the cover as saying, "For the former liberal arts major and other right-brainers, Seife is the man." I agree that Seife takes intricate, difficult topics and concepts and presents them in a lucid and understandable manner. This book probably best exemplifies the quote as pretty much all formulae and the "hard" parts of "hard science" are translated into easy-to-read text. Whether or not the average right-brainer will follow all of the reasoning and points is not for me to say.
In my own professional work I deal with some of the science parts that Seife has written about (including information theory), but as an implementer, not as a researcher. That is why I try to find authors covering material that I want to know about, but haven't the opportunity to do the basic research on. Charles Seife is one of the best at this.
I count myself lucky that prior to picking up "Decoding the Universe", I read a couple of books on codes and cryptography (very interesting and very, very detailed) and Walter Issacson's biography of Albert Einstein: "Einstein: His Life and Universe". Everyone "knows" that Einstein created the theory (ies, actually) of Relativity, but most are unaware of his seminal contributions to the establishment and development of Quantum Theory and Mechanics. He was and in deep and surprising ways. (Another book I've recommended and reviwed.)
Prior knowledge of these theories is not essential for enjoying Seife's book, but knowing how they were developed and how they impacted Physics, War, and the World give one a far better appreciation for their importance and how Information Theory actually addresses many of the issues raised by Quantum Theory (and troubled Einstein for the last 30-odd years of his life.)
Seife makes a strong argument that Information Theory is the third major revolution in physics of the 20th century, after Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Although parts of the "solutions" personally trouble the author, he gives the reader all of the facts and theories that are shaping scientists and theorists understanding of the world and the cosmos. Pick it up and judeg for yourself!
May 12, 2020
The crux of this book is the link between the traditional domains of information theory and more unlikely fields, such as thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. This gives the book immense scope as it strides from computer science and linguistics to relativity and black holes. In some places this works well. For me at least, the inclusion of information theory was very useful in understanding some of the stranger points of quantum mechanics. In other sections, however, it definitely seemed like a stretch. Information theory may be related to black holes and the ultimate fate of the universe, but Seife did not convince me that we can prove this, or that (if, as he says himself, we will never retrieve information from black holes) such a proof is relevant at all. Here the book's breadth seems more like a attempt to prove relevance through the shotgun method rather than a way to expound on the true consequences of information theory. But I am not a scientist and only have a flimsy layman's knowledge of cosmology, quantum theory, and other fields that occupy the cutting edge of scientific study, so when it comes to relevance and whether this argument is compelling, your mileage may vary.
On the whole though, I enjoyed this book. I like the way Seife writes: it's lighthearted and fast-paced. It may not be scientifically rigorous or very deep, but it is pop science, so a reader shouldn't expect that. I definitely recommend this book (or at least the first few chapters) to people in fields such as linguistics, media and communication. It provided a way of looking at some more traditional fields that I found quite interesting.
On the whole though, I enjoyed this book. I like the way Seife writes: it's lighthearted and fast-paced. It may not be scientifically rigorous or very deep, but it is pop science, so a reader shouldn't expect that. I definitely recommend this book (or at least the first few chapters) to people in fields such as linguistics, media and communication. It provided a way of looking at some more traditional fields that I found quite interesting.
July 27, 2016
I have bought this book 3 times. Each time I loaned it out to someone and needed another copy. I found it one of the most influential book I have read in a long time. Maybe a little has to do with the fact that the discovery or invention of information theory was by Claude Shannon who worked at Bell Labs and I also work at AT&T. It paints a view of the universe as being the exchange of information. The author gets into the idea that the laws of thermodynamics are the same as the laws of information. Without work, everything eventually reaches maximum randomness(think of gas molecules in a jar or cigar smoke in a room, it spreads out evenly eventually and reaches maximum entropy. Information follows the same law. It allows a scientist to record the sounds of dolphins and even though we can't understand what their noises mean, if they are plotted you will get something non-random which means they are carrying information and are not just random sounds. We should be able to identify sounds from space and determine if they are random or follow a pattern which probably means there is information being sent. I am not a scientist so I might have misrepresented some of this but the bottom line is the universe is processing information everywhere and all the time from the stars to our cells and atoms.
August 8, 2018
Me ha gustado mucho la forma sencilla y clara con que Seife nos introduce a conceptos que suelen ser peliagudos, tales como la teoría computacional, relatividad, entropía, teoría cuántica y otros tantos a través del descubrimiento de qué es el universo, cómo se dirige indefectiblemente a su enfriamiento y la función de la información como único asidero contra esta tendencia (provisionalmente, al menos), incluida la función intrínseca de los organismos y de la vida en general de almacenar y transmitir la información genética.
Sin embargo me parece que en ocasiones exagera la relevancia de la llamada Ciencia de la Información, pero qué otra cosa iba a hacer, si de eso trata su libro�
Me parece entonces que un aficionado a la ciencia, en particular a la cosmología y a la física (tanto clásica como cuántica), puede disfrutar ampliamente de este libro y comenzar a comprender mejor los conceptos base de estas disciplinas.
Sin embargo me parece que en ocasiones exagera la relevancia de la llamada Ciencia de la Información, pero qué otra cosa iba a hacer, si de eso trata su libro�
Me parece entonces que un aficionado a la ciencia, en particular a la cosmología y a la física (tanto clásica como cuántica), puede disfrutar ampliamente de este libro y comenzar a comprender mejor los conceptos base de estas disciplinas.
November 26, 2013
Exactly the book I was looking for. Needs a glossary. Someone needs to write a book specifically about the new ' holographic principle '.
January 5, 2013
I really enjoyed reading this book. A lot of cool ideas that allowed my mind to wander.
February 10, 2016
Since Chapter 7
Description there are many things of undetermined
It is discussed in only the subjectivity of the author
There is no credibility
Description there are many things of undetermined
It is discussed in only the subjectivity of the author
There is no credibility
November 6, 2018
Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife is an attempt to connect Information Theory with the physical world. It is quite successful in this by changing the vantage point from which we view the results of the experiments.
Information Theory is a relatively new idea to the science scene, having only been formally introduced in 1948 by Claude Elwood Shannon in a Bell Labs Technical Journal. However, in using the concept of Entropy to define Information, Shannon linked the nascent field to the somewhat more established area of Statistical Thermodynamics. The equation is pretty simple. I don’t know if I can put a sigma into this text, so I won’t try.
Seife’s idea and the main thesis is that Information is everything and everywhere. Once we figured out how to quantify the stuff it was only a matter of time. Take the difference between living and non-living things for instance. What is the difference between a rock and a virus aside from the obvious ones like size? Well, a virus is capable of replication. It can copy its information and spread it on to descendants that are similar to it. Arguments arise as to whether a virus is a living thing. I don’t know if they still do have such arguments, but Seife argues that viruses can carry on the information present in their bodies, resisting the ever-present ravages of Entropy. DNA is a very effective tool for this information transfer. Mutations that occur are usually taken care of by enzymes and other proteins exquisitely suited to this task.
The same thing goes for relativity and quantum mechanics. Information Theory is everywhere once you look from a different point of view. The limit on the speed of light is not on the light pulse per se, rather it is on the information transfer inherent in that light pulse. The book does a great job of explaining things in simple everyday terms that a layperson should be able to understand. As for quantum mechanics, most people who read this know of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It is a limit to the amount of Information that we can glean from any measurement of a subatomic particle. More simply, you can’t know both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle with perfect accuracy. The measurement itself changes something about the particle we are trying to measure.
Going back to light, we know that light has a dual nature of particle and wave. Rather, light might be something else entirely and our understanding of it is limited by these ideas. We can show that light is either a particle or a wave depending on how we conduct an experiment to test for it. Take the now famous Double-Slit Experiment that ‘proved� light to be a wave. In the present day, we can force an electron to become a probability distribution just by doing this experiment with single electrons at a time. As for the particle nature of light, we can show this by the photoelectric effect, the thing that earned Einstein his Nobel Prize.
This book is really entertaining and written with clarity and flair. The book is somewhat old, so I don’t really know if anything in Physics has drastically changed since 2006. I don’t know if this is a fringe theory or something that holds water, but the argument is compelling to me.
Information Theory is a relatively new idea to the science scene, having only been formally introduced in 1948 by Claude Elwood Shannon in a Bell Labs Technical Journal. However, in using the concept of Entropy to define Information, Shannon linked the nascent field to the somewhat more established area of Statistical Thermodynamics. The equation is pretty simple. I don’t know if I can put a sigma into this text, so I won’t try.
Seife’s idea and the main thesis is that Information is everything and everywhere. Once we figured out how to quantify the stuff it was only a matter of time. Take the difference between living and non-living things for instance. What is the difference between a rock and a virus aside from the obvious ones like size? Well, a virus is capable of replication. It can copy its information and spread it on to descendants that are similar to it. Arguments arise as to whether a virus is a living thing. I don’t know if they still do have such arguments, but Seife argues that viruses can carry on the information present in their bodies, resisting the ever-present ravages of Entropy. DNA is a very effective tool for this information transfer. Mutations that occur are usually taken care of by enzymes and other proteins exquisitely suited to this task.
The same thing goes for relativity and quantum mechanics. Information Theory is everywhere once you look from a different point of view. The limit on the speed of light is not on the light pulse per se, rather it is on the information transfer inherent in that light pulse. The book does a great job of explaining things in simple everyday terms that a layperson should be able to understand. As for quantum mechanics, most people who read this know of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It is a limit to the amount of Information that we can glean from any measurement of a subatomic particle. More simply, you can’t know both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle with perfect accuracy. The measurement itself changes something about the particle we are trying to measure.
Going back to light, we know that light has a dual nature of particle and wave. Rather, light might be something else entirely and our understanding of it is limited by these ideas. We can show that light is either a particle or a wave depending on how we conduct an experiment to test for it. Take the now famous Double-Slit Experiment that ‘proved� light to be a wave. In the present day, we can force an electron to become a probability distribution just by doing this experiment with single electrons at a time. As for the particle nature of light, we can show this by the photoelectric effect, the thing that earned Einstein his Nobel Prize.
This book is really entertaining and written with clarity and flair. The book is somewhat old, so I don’t really know if anything in Physics has drastically changed since 2006. I don’t know if this is a fringe theory or something that holds water, but the argument is compelling to me.
March 27, 2020
A very interesting book that slightly over eggs the pudding in pushing the information agenda. It got better as it went on. Seife seems on firmer ground when he is actually writing about the most speculative aspects of Information theory.
For me, it started off poorly when Seife said that Mary, Queen of Scots was undone by a secret message about a plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth being broken. While it added some colour to his chapter about cryptography it simply wasn't true. Mary was set up by Elizabeth's chief spymaster and was being framed regardless. It had little to do with any messages she was sending or being sent. Parliament had passed a law specifically targeting Mary that even by the standards of justice at the time was an outrageous abuse of law. Parliament held her accountable for any treasonable acts against the Queen, whether she was aware of the plots or not! It is a minor quibble in a book that is mostly about cutting edge science but it raises my hackles when authors interpret and massage history for their own ends.
I was unconvinced by his chapter on Life. From the outset the author seems to adopt the Pythagorean attitude that the maths that underlie the scientific discoveries are in fact the reality. Seife seems to take the same position on life as Dawkins that somehow the building blocks for life, RNA and DNA, magically occurred in the primordial soup. He never questions this anomaly that runs counter to the Second Law of Thermodynamics that he quotes often. It beggars belief that complex proteins combine in such a specific way to become self-replicating biological machines just by chance. In Seife's case it seems that life is some sort of response to the need for the Universe to share information. This is a very curious anthromorphism on a Universal scale. How can a non-sentinent mass of energy be ascribed purpose?
I find it hard to take his nihilistic position seriously when on the one hand he writes as though life on Earth is futile given its inevitable destruction in a few billion years and on the other hand he readily accepts that there may be infinite Universes and infinite versions of ourselves existing in multiple Universes that split every time a decision is made. The fact that every person only gets to enjoy, on average, their three score and ten years on Earth I fail to see any negative connection with any life as lived and experienced now with the notion that the fate of the Universe at some time in the future, that on a human timescale seems infinite, is disquieting or unsettling.
The more I read the more I was convinced that behind the information screen is actually the Truth and maybe what the Universe is trying to uncover for us is truth. Perhaps it is God's way of giving us clues about our true nature and our position in this realm. It would have been an interesting aside if he had asked a theologian or a philosopher about the latest advances in information theory so that the reader would have gained a slightly different perspective from the cold maths that Seife presented.
I was surprised that there was no mention of dark matter and whether that could be the clue to the apparent superposition conundrum. Perhaps dark matter is the link between the entangled particles?
For me, it started off poorly when Seife said that Mary, Queen of Scots was undone by a secret message about a plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth being broken. While it added some colour to his chapter about cryptography it simply wasn't true. Mary was set up by Elizabeth's chief spymaster and was being framed regardless. It had little to do with any messages she was sending or being sent. Parliament had passed a law specifically targeting Mary that even by the standards of justice at the time was an outrageous abuse of law. Parliament held her accountable for any treasonable acts against the Queen, whether she was aware of the plots or not! It is a minor quibble in a book that is mostly about cutting edge science but it raises my hackles when authors interpret and massage history for their own ends.
I was unconvinced by his chapter on Life. From the outset the author seems to adopt the Pythagorean attitude that the maths that underlie the scientific discoveries are in fact the reality. Seife seems to take the same position on life as Dawkins that somehow the building blocks for life, RNA and DNA, magically occurred in the primordial soup. He never questions this anomaly that runs counter to the Second Law of Thermodynamics that he quotes often. It beggars belief that complex proteins combine in such a specific way to become self-replicating biological machines just by chance. In Seife's case it seems that life is some sort of response to the need for the Universe to share information. This is a very curious anthromorphism on a Universal scale. How can a non-sentinent mass of energy be ascribed purpose?
I find it hard to take his nihilistic position seriously when on the one hand he writes as though life on Earth is futile given its inevitable destruction in a few billion years and on the other hand he readily accepts that there may be infinite Universes and infinite versions of ourselves existing in multiple Universes that split every time a decision is made. The fact that every person only gets to enjoy, on average, their three score and ten years on Earth I fail to see any negative connection with any life as lived and experienced now with the notion that the fate of the Universe at some time in the future, that on a human timescale seems infinite, is disquieting or unsettling.
The more I read the more I was convinced that behind the information screen is actually the Truth and maybe what the Universe is trying to uncover for us is truth. Perhaps it is God's way of giving us clues about our true nature and our position in this realm. It would have been an interesting aside if he had asked a theologian or a philosopher about the latest advances in information theory so that the reader would have gained a slightly different perspective from the cold maths that Seife presented.
I was surprised that there was no mention of dark matter and whether that could be the clue to the apparent superposition conundrum. Perhaps dark matter is the link between the entangled particles?
May 27, 2018
Charles Seife is a science writer and associate professor of journalism at New York University. In this 2006 book, subtitled: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes, the author endeavors to take us on a whirlwind tour of both classical and quantum physics (interestingly enough, he leaves out any mention of chaos theory, which would seem to be cogent to the particular “lens� of information theory through which he weaves his story).
As mentioned above, Seife contextualizes modern physics through the lens of information theory, framing the known (and knowable) universe in terms of information exchange; essentially: “everything in the universe IS information.� An entertaining framework, perhaps, from which to tell his story, but all too often it seems like a fairly thin metaphor that is stating the somewhat obvious. Added to this, Seife’s writing style is somewhat turgid and repetitive (sometimes for paragraphs on end) as he tries to pound home his information=physical reality metaphor while really only covering a basic popularization of the story of the evolution of modern physics from Newton to Nils Bohr.
I found Seife’s tale mostly entertaining, if not somewhat repetitive (I was not particularly “mind-blown� by his ultimate conclusions, which seemed to me to fall somewhat short of “explaining everything in the cosmos, from our brains to black holes…�). Seife seems to think that modern physics, taken from the perspective of information exchange, really is (on the verge of) answering all the really hard questions of existence, but I think he is only half right. Perhaps physics (and particularly the more recent and exotic “brands� such as string theory and multiverses) does answer some of these hard questions, but I would argue, at a maximum, it only answers half of the hard questions. The other half (individual and collective consciousness, for instance) is, as with most “hard science� theories straining to be a “theory of everything,� completely ignored or reduced out of relevance from the conversation, and so, Seife’s conclusions remain somewhat unsatisfactory in delivering the promises of his title.
For a "theory of everything" approach to the universe and conceivable reality, I prefer the much more robust and challenging work of Ken Wilber (Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, being the best introduction to his later and more mature work).
As mentioned above, Seife contextualizes modern physics through the lens of information theory, framing the known (and knowable) universe in terms of information exchange; essentially: “everything in the universe IS information.� An entertaining framework, perhaps, from which to tell his story, but all too often it seems like a fairly thin metaphor that is stating the somewhat obvious. Added to this, Seife’s writing style is somewhat turgid and repetitive (sometimes for paragraphs on end) as he tries to pound home his information=physical reality metaphor while really only covering a basic popularization of the story of the evolution of modern physics from Newton to Nils Bohr.
I found Seife’s tale mostly entertaining, if not somewhat repetitive (I was not particularly “mind-blown� by his ultimate conclusions, which seemed to me to fall somewhat short of “explaining everything in the cosmos, from our brains to black holes…�). Seife seems to think that modern physics, taken from the perspective of information exchange, really is (on the verge of) answering all the really hard questions of existence, but I think he is only half right. Perhaps physics (and particularly the more recent and exotic “brands� such as string theory and multiverses) does answer some of these hard questions, but I would argue, at a maximum, it only answers half of the hard questions. The other half (individual and collective consciousness, for instance) is, as with most “hard science� theories straining to be a “theory of everything,� completely ignored or reduced out of relevance from the conversation, and so, Seife’s conclusions remain somewhat unsatisfactory in delivering the promises of his title.
For a "theory of everything" approach to the universe and conceivable reality, I prefer the much more robust and challenging work of Ken Wilber (Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, being the best introduction to his later and more mature work).
December 19, 2020
Interesting book about information theory. I’ve always been very opposed to entropy being taught as a “measure of disorder� in classrooms and the author articulated Shannon entropy in a statistical way better than I have in the past, so I will probably steal some of his examples of the marbles in the box. I also really liked the visualization of a “multi leafed� multiverse which made the concept of a multiverse in general more accessible to me. He did a good job of explaining the quantum “observation� which causes the wave function to collapse, and how qubits can be transferred to classically large objects but there is almost immediate decoherence. I had never even heard of decoherence before so it really helped tidy up some open question in my brain, especially wrt to understanding Schrödinger’s cat. The spear in the barn visualizations for relativity were also useful.
I know it’s too short of a book to fit in all the details, but if the author wrote a full book on each of the chapters (especially the latter ones related to modern physics, for example what does “spin� actullly represent) I would probably read those as well. I also wish there was more details of the math, maybe in the appendix for soem of the later chapters.
I would be very interested in having this guy as a professor for a semester long class, there was a few times in the book I really wish I could ask him a clarifying question, and I’m confident he would have a clear and well articulated response.
I know it’s too short of a book to fit in all the details, but if the author wrote a full book on each of the chapters (especially the latter ones related to modern physics, for example what does “spin� actullly represent) I would probably read those as well. I also wish there was more details of the math, maybe in the appendix for soem of the later chapters.
I would be very interested in having this guy as a professor for a semester long class, there was a few times in the book I really wish I could ask him a clarifying question, and I’m confident he would have a clear and well articulated response.
November 9, 2017
The book is a very technical list of issues, it begins with information, showing that it’s a concept based in physical properties, information it’s not something ethereal. It relates information with thermodynamics, and wastes a bid deal of energy trying to demonstrate that information is even more fundamental, more real than concepts like temperature, space or time.
It explains briefly relativity and quantum theory with the purpose of once again showing that information science fits perfectly in these theories. The end of the book is a digression about universes, parallel universes, multi universes, black-holes and you need a strong willpower to keep your eyes on it.
I don´t think the book it´s for the general public, neither I think that specialists are going to like it. It falls into the middle, non-specialist like me get frustrated because even that the first chapters are well explained you get completely lost when entanglement, universes and black-holes enter into the game. But I suppose that someone with a larger background into the matter would find the book too superficial.
The most valuable knowledge I’ve learned in the book has been about entanglement and coherence, how nature pries and aborts superposition states. Let’s put the book in a shelf to sleep forever.
It explains briefly relativity and quantum theory with the purpose of once again showing that information science fits perfectly in these theories. The end of the book is a digression about universes, parallel universes, multi universes, black-holes and you need a strong willpower to keep your eyes on it.
I don´t think the book it´s for the general public, neither I think that specialists are going to like it. It falls into the middle, non-specialist like me get frustrated because even that the first chapters are well explained you get completely lost when entanglement, universes and black-holes enter into the game. But I suppose that someone with a larger background into the matter would find the book too superficial.
The most valuable knowledge I’ve learned in the book has been about entanglement and coherence, how nature pries and aborts superposition states. Let’s put the book in a shelf to sleep forever.
January 5, 2020
It taught me what I was looking for but Seife must love typing. The examples drag on longer than needed. If he were describing a deck of cards, he'd have to say something like "A heart is not a club, diamond, or spade. A diamond is not a spade or heart or club. A spade..." going through each possible iteration. Meanwhile also explaining basic things like what a hologram is. Who is reading about quantum physics that doesn't know what a hologram is? So yeah, the expansions are clear though long and a bit tedious.
November 28, 2020
Good read, with some imaginative content and thought problems thrown in to keep the reader engaged. It's been over a decade since I read it, but I do remember the take on entropy and the universe as a whole had a nihilistic flavor, but that's ok too. I took it to Parker, and while my friends where out drinking and laying in the sun, I was gobbling this down. I still get laughed at to the day for it and still wouldn't do it differently.
I just finished the Dao of Physics, and while equally engaging, complements Decoding in that it's alot happier a read : )
I just finished the Dao of Physics, and while equally engaging, complements Decoding in that it's alot happier a read : )
April 14, 2018
Un achat impulsif dans une foire en plein air et pourtant un des meilleurs livres du genre que j'ai lus ces dernières années. Étonnant que la théorie de l'information mise en lien avec la thermo-dynamique offre une perspective si intéressante sur tant de sujets, allant de la physique quantique aux trous noirs. Nettement pas un livre qui s'attarde aux détails, mais cette perspective globale permet de vulgariser ces sujets de manière plus accessible que l'on pourrait espérer.
August 3, 2022
My ratings of books on ŷ are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.
November 8, 2017
Si como yo no eres físico ni matemático pero tienes curiosidad por cosas como la mecánica cuántica o la teoría de la relatividad, vas a disfrutar enormemente este libro. En cosasiones desasosegante, pero también liberador, para mí tiene la respuesta del sentido de la vida y del por qué de la muerte
May 22, 2020
This popular science book does a good job of introducing different applications of information theory to science. The chapter on life was particularly interesting. Sadly he plays the part of information theory cheerleader too enthusiastically for my taste, equating everything to a theory of information.
August 20, 2023
Questo saggio scientifico riguarda l'universo tutto visto dal punto di vista dell'informazione. L'informazione è quello che rimane dopo aver tolto ogni ridondanza. E la vita è basata sulla conservazione dell'informazione. La vita è il disperato tentativo di mantenere e trasmettere l'informazione. Lettura sorprendente.
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