Information
The same song from vinyl, a phone, or a hum — no shared atom, yet the same song. What survived is a pattern.
Pick a song you love. You have heard it from vinyl, from your phone, and from someone humming it by the coffee machine. Three completely different media, no shared atom. And yet, without hesitation, it is the same song. So what is the song? Not the record and not the file. Something that stays the same while all the matter beneath it is swapped out.
Level 2 The explanation▾
What remains when the medium changes we call a pattern, and more precisely: information. In 1948 Claude Shannon gave the word an exact mathematical definition — a quantity measured in units, independent of the matter carrying it. Every phone call and every file runs on this. It is one of science's solid achievements.
But here is a trap worth saying out loud: Shannon's "information" is quantity, not meaning. Pure random noise can carry more Shannon "information" than a love letter. The two senses share one word, and they are not the same thing. Most of the confusion around "everything is information" is born from sliding between them.
Level 3 Deeper▾
If "I" am less the atoms and more the pattern they are arranged in, then "I" am the same kind of thing as a song. This is not a proof, it is an angle.
The philosophical leap. John Wheeler proposed "It from Bit" — that information may be the bottom layer and matter derived from it. A serious, contested proposal; not consensus, not proof.
There is a tempting line: "consciousness is information experiencing itself." It sounds deep but solves nothing — it renames the hard problem instead of answering it. It is fair to say information is an interesting lens on consciousness; not fair to call it the answer.
What is known
Pattern/information can persist through a change of medium; Shannon information is measurable and well defined.
What is open
The link between information (quantity) and meaning, and between information and felt experience.
Off limits
That "Shannon information" explains meaning or consciousness — these are two different senses of the word.
Level 4 Sources▾
- Shannon, C. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Information as quantity, distinct from meaning.
- Wheeler, J. (1990). Information, Physics, Quantum. "It from Bit" — reality from information (inspiration, not proof).
- Sefer Yetzirah, ch. 1 — creation through letters and numbers; an intriguing resemblance, not a prophecy of information theory.