Re: [Patents] French high level civil servant warns about spwat danger

[Carsten Svaneborg <svanebor@mpip-mainz.mpg.de>]

Gregory Aharonian:
>>>> Software is just one of the branches of physics.
> Query:  "information" and "physical"

Information exists anywhere where a message is passed
from an Alice to a Bob, whatever entities they might be.

Information is what is passed between experiment and
measurement device, between cell nucleus and ribosome,
between the earth and the moon [1], between a quasar
and the camera mounted at the end of a telescope, between
dogs peeing up a tree, or between birds sitting in the same
tree. The meaning of the latter, is fuck off this is my
property -- not very intellectual at all.

Thus information is a pretty ubiquitous concept, and it
is not hard to find physical theories dealing with the
concept, such as statistical or quantum mechanics.


One way of processing information is via software, which
just constitutes a recepie of how to convert information
into other information, where we supply the context of
how to interprete the recepie instructions, e.g. a Turing
machine or an Intel chip. E.g. 2+2 => 4 but more complicated.

An experimental setup typically processes information
by amplifying it and converting it into digital form for
easy data aquisition, and by analysing spectra from stellar
objects their temperature and chemical composition can
be deduced.

The ribosome also processes the information contained
in the mRNA molecules, and translates this into a particular
protein.  (there are many more information processing steps
between DNA and proteins) And that protein could have the
function of a trans-membrane channel in a neuron, that is
sensitive to a particular neuro transmitter, which makes neurons
able to process information.

Birds and dogs also process the information that is contained
in bird-song or smell.

Information processing is also very ubiquitous, but software
is only one of many ways in which it is done. Because physical
theories deals with information does not follow that a specific
instance of information processing is a part of physics.


[1] In order for the moon to circle the earth, it needs to know
where is the earth, this information is being transferred via the
gravitational field.

-- 
  Mvh. Carsten