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Can Information Travel Faster Than the Speed of Light?

January 15, 2011 by rberkan

If you are a physicist, you will learn that there is something actually faster than the speed of light. It is called the “phase” speed and it involves rigorous mathematics of wave mechanics. While modern physics considers light to be the absolute carrier of information, it undermines the nature of information. Physics does not recognize information to be outside of its realm which has been one of the major shortcomings of all times. I will come to this point later in my posts.

In reality, information does not obey the rules of modern physics. It can travel faster than the speed of light, and even faster than the phase speed. Best of all, you don’t need anything else but to look at the “Wheel of Fortune” game to understand it.

In the Wheel of Fortune game, information that is only partially displayed makes its way to the contender and can be reconstructed before it is completely displayed. Thus, if displaying each letter on the dashboard is a light signal, the travel of the complete information is faster than the speed of light. An amazing example is shown below where Caitlin Burke from New York reconstructed the complete information by just a single clue, letter L. “I’ve got a good feeling about this”

There are many instances in our lives that we complete partial information before seeing the complete package. In the hierarchy of DATA – INFORMATION – KNOWLEDGE – INFERENCE, what makes it possible for information to travel faster than the speed of light is the top two levels: KNOWLEDGE and INFERENCE. Even in the animal kingdom, when a predator and prey are staring at each other from a distance, the prey can often take off without the information that the predator has made his/her move. We call this cognitive process “anticipation” that takes place in every biological brain.

If we can devise a computer system that can emulate the “anticipation” capability via semantic algorithms, then we will be able to solve some of the most enduring technological challenges: data compression. An information package could be sent from point A to point B faster than the speed of light once the receiving end has the required anticipatory algorithms.

And, don’t think the speed of light is very fast! It takes 8 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth. If we want to travel to distant galaxies, we will need semantic systems to communicate much faster than the speed of light.

Posted in Information - Science | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

What is Information?

December 26, 2010 by rberkan

I went to school for 25 years. Started at age 6, finished it at age 31. I studied physics, nuclear engineering, control systems, artificial intelligence, and most recently, genetics. The more I studied, the more alienated I became towards knowledge, only to find myself questioning the “knowledge” itself:  Where did it come from?  What is “information” as the building blocks of knowledge? 

Information is the most widely misunderstood phenomenon by scientists. Unfortunately, there is no formal training on the subject of information. Neither is there any curriculum for it. Information simply hangs there in the air starting from the elementary school. No one really tells you what it is all the way through your Ph.D. And even then, it may easily whiz by over your head. 

We all know that information can be extremely powerful. With a simple 5-word sentence ”you’ve won a million dollars” or “sorry, your friend just died” information can create an immense biological and physical effect on human body, far stronger and long-lasting than that of any drug.   Simple price information can make someone a millionaire overnight. A leader can say “there is WMD in Iraq” in the United Nations, to make the whole world believe in the cause of the deadliest war.  There are countless examples.

Information does not only belong to us humans. It belongs to the entire biological realm. Actually, it is worth considering the hypothesis that information exists even in the absence of biological life, thus making it a fundamental property of the universe.  Knowledge, on the other hand, belongs to the biological brain. Accordingly, we can identify a simple hierarchical order. We collect DATA, identify and categorize it to create INFORMATION, then associate it with other information to create KNOWLEDGE. We can even add WISDOM (or inference) as an additional layer on top of the pyramid, DATA – INFORMATION – KNOWLEDGE – WISDOM, where wisdom would refer to the ability to generate more knowledge from existing knowledge through logic. 

The complexity of this phenomenon fascinates me, therefore; I dedicated this blog activity entirely on “information” within three main categories: (1) Business, (2) Technology, and (3) Science of information.

I will leave you with one question: What was the first knowledge ever human beings must have acquired from the DATA – INFORMATION – KNOWLEDGE perspective? Hint: think about day light.

Posted in Information - Business, Information - Science, Information - Technology | 2 Comments »

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