Information evolution - in past and future history
Abstract
Language is certainly an information structure; money and markets are also; as is music and computer programs and various associated data. Human perceptual and cognitive skills belong to the same realm of information handling systems, evolved as they have by some process, most often described in Darwinian terms.
Competition, selection, mutation; is that all there is to it? Over a long period of time, with replication and reproduction taking terms? How did it all start — in clay structures, in different chemicals symbiotically merging? And without the particular properties of water and of carbon and carbon based chemistry life and the information that it depends upon would have been impossible.1 We should not here be engaged in a full blown discussion of intricate arguments as to how evolution may have come about, we are only — and that is not a small order either, though more restricted — concerned with the processes whereby information, and especially information handling systems, may emerge.
Competition, selection, mutation; is that all there is to it? Over a long period of time, with replication and reproduction taking terms? How did it all start — in clay structures, in different chemicals symbiotically merging? And without the particular properties of water and of carbon and carbon based chemistry life and the information that it depends upon would have been impossible.1 We should not here be engaged in a full blown discussion of intricate arguments as to how evolution may have come about, we are only — and that is not a small order either, though more restricted — concerned with the processes whereby information, and especially information handling systems, may emerge.
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