True atoms

Information

The information in your genes sets in motion growth and repair. The information steers the system. The information builds a body, one that thinks it is something more than it is. The data held in those helical structures may lie dormant for a while or be in constant use. That data triggers things by harnessing amplification mechanisms to make things on a bigger scale happen. Proteins are manufactured, eggs are manufactured and placed in place to be fertilised. Data in a computer is not too dissimilar. Electron states represent data which too can trigger something in response to various situations. A few electrons push open a gate allowing vastly more to pass. Those may open another gate or switch that enables ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more power through. Tiny controls can be amplified in stages to multiply the number of atoms changing state by factors of millions, billions.

Genetic information, computer information is active or potentially so. If I were I to scrawl some words on a piece of paper, I lay down information. Layers of carbon atoms spread on the paper is information. It is inert though. That information represents things that a human or animal may interpret. I suppose one could envisage it triggering a response. Were I to write something along the lines of your wife is having an affair, it may trigger the husband to act. However, there is a difference between information in the form of writing on paper and information held in genes. There is a difference between a photograph printed on paper and computer memory state. A photograph holds information as does writing, but this information is ethereal, it represents, it is there to be interpreted. It is not part of a mechanism like genes are. The point being made here is that information can act on other information. And do so physically. Some forms of information can be responsive and act as a cog in a machine. Information can have entirely different potential depending on the format. Some information is a piece in a system. Other items of information are only atoms laid out to represent things that mean something to various humans/animals.

I can relay information to you via a speaker. As I do so, the air molecules vibrate, collide and a pressure wave travels towards your ear. I do not add molecules to the room, nor remove any. The information in this example is encoded motion. Information can be the state, position or velocity of atoms. True atoms turn that concept inside out for they are themselves information-esque. Akin to information. A sound wave has no substance, no solidity. True atoms do not have substance nor weight so to speak either. They are after all, incited into inter-action from nothing. True atoms act on other true atoms. True atoms adopt the properties of mass.