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Subject Is information alive? Memetics, show that information replicates, evolves and mutates.
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An intro to memetics, our society seems to have embraced memes and yet how many people actually understand the concept of a meme? We're all familiar with memes, especially on GLP and other online communities.

Let me start off by stating that everything in existence is at the most basic and fundamental level, information. Electromagnetic radiation is the communication or transmission of this information. As humans we use our senses to experience reality and the information of these experiences are what make us who we are. We absorb information (learning) and we also communicate this information and from this we grow, as individuals and as a whole.

So what is information? There is no real definition, looking in the dictionary takes you to knowledge, data and back to information. Information seems to be bits of reality we absorb and communicate, change and create. But just what is it exactly? Is it alive? Is it what people imagine god to be?

The English word was apparently derived from the Latin stem (information-) of the nominative (informatio): this noun is in its turn derived from the verb "informare" (to inform) in the sense of "to give form to the mind", "to discipline", "instruct", "teach": "Men so wise should go and inform their kings." (1330) Inform itself comes (via French informer) from the Latin verb informare, to give form, to form an idea of. Furthermore, Latin itself already contained the word informatio meaning concept or idea, but the extent to which this may have influenced the development of the word information in English is not clear.

The ancient Greek word for form was μορφή (morphe; cf. morph) and also εἶδος (eidos) "kind, idea, shape, set", the latter word was famously used in a technical philosophical sense by Plato (and later Aristotle) to denote the ideal identity or essence of something (see Theory of Forms). "Eidos" can also be associated with thought, proposition or even concept.

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Below is a quote from the magazine Wired, March 1994.

Information is an activity. Information is a life form. Information is a relationship. Information is a verb not a noun, it is something that happens in the field of interaction between minds or objects or other pieces of information. Information is an action which occupies time rather than a state of being which occupies physical space.

For the information enthusiasts information becomes equal to "life". And it comes equipped with intention:

Information wants to be free.

[link to www.sveiby.com]

Logos (lo´gos´, lòg´òs´) noun

1.Philosophy. a. In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos. b. Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves. c. In Stoicism, the active, material, rational principle of the cosmos; nous. Identified with God, it is the source of all activity and generation and is the power of reason residing in the human soul.

2.Judaism. a. In biblical Judaism, the word of God, which itself has creative power and is God's medium of communication with the human race. b. In Hellenistic Judaism, a hypostasis associated with divine wisdom.

3.Theology. In Saint John's Gospel, especially in the prologue (1:1-14), the creative word of God, which is itself God and incarnate in Jesus. In this sense, also called Word.


Tractate 22:

I term the Immortal one plasmate, because it is a form of energy; it is living information. It replicates itself - not through information or in information - but as information.

As living information, the plasmate travels up the optic nerve of a human to the pineal body. It uses the human brain as a female host in which to replicate itself into its active form. This is an interspecies symbiosis.

The Hermetic alchemists knew of it in theory from ancient texts, but could not duplicate it, since they could not locate the dormant, buried plasmate. Bruno suspected that the plasmate had been destroyed by the Empire; for hinting at this he was burned. "The Empire never ended."

Since the Universe is actually composed of living information, then it can be said that information will save us. This is the saving gnosis which the Gnostics sought.

- Philip K. Dick - _VALIS_
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