----- Original Message ----- From: "Rakesh Bhandari" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 10:29 AM Subject: [PEN-L:23822] Re: Re: Re: Marx vs. Roemer
> > > >Shane Mage > > > >"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all > >things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even > >downright silly. > > > >When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that > >all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. > >Weiner) ==================== Um, the GUI wasn't invented until after Weiner was dead so the above seems of dubious origin. > > Shane, > do you endorse this idealism? Mario Bunge has argued against the myth > that the universe is made of bits rather than matter, a myth > strengthened by the enormous role that information plays in > industrial societies has given rise to the myth An instant's > reflection suffices to puncture this idealist fancy. "In fact, an > information system, such as the Internet, is composed by human beings > (or automata) that operate artifacts such as coders, signals, > transmitters, receivers, and decoders. These are all material things > or processes in them. Not even signals are immaterial: in fact, every > signal rides on some material process, such as a radio wave. > > "In other words, it is not true that the world is immaterial or > in the process of dematerialization - or, as some popular authors put > it, that bits are replacing atoms. We eat atoms, not bits. And when > we get sick we call a physician, not an electronic engineer. What is > true is that E-mail is replacing "snail-mail." But both the > electromagnetic signal that propagates along a net and the letter > carried by a mailman are concrete items. The information revolution > is a huge technological innovation with a strong social impact, but > it does not require any changes in worldview: today's world is just > as material and changeable as yesterday's." > > Bunge, Mario A humanist's doubts about the information > revolution.(The Freedom to Inquire) Free > Inquiry v17, n2 (Spring, 1997):24 (5 pages) > ======================== The silent assumption here is that information is immaterial....Theories of quantum computation go quite a ways towards undermining the information/matter distinction, a Newtonian legacy.......... "The space-time continuum? Even continuum existence itself? Except as an idealization neither the one entity nor the other can make any claim to be a primordial category in the description of nature." [John Wheeler] Ian
