3 posts tagged “information”

It's a truism that real DC residents rarely get down to the Mall to exploit things like the Capitol, the National Gallery, and the monuments. Maybe it's the irritation we feel about tourists who stand on the left side of the escalator, maybe it's the lack of reasonably priced beverages. At any rate, after 15 years in DC, this Saturday I finally went down to the Library of Congress to get my reader's card and hit the stacks.

I suppose that as a library sciences student it was inevitable that I'd end up there. Heck, I've been using LOC call numbers since my first full time job (Dewey is for dweebs-- yeah, I said it). But it was only now, when my 7th class in the program required me to compare a pre-1850 and a modern edition of the same book, that I knuckled down and took the Metro to Capitol South.

You can walk into the Library of Congress any time if all you want to do is look at the architecture, mosaics, and exhibits-- and yes, it's totally worth that. But if you actually want to get a book off the shelf and into your hands, you have to register and get a reader card. I was dreading the hoops I'd have to jump through, but as it turns out, my better half and I sailed through the process in under 20 minutes. The funniest aspect of it was that at least three times during the registration they asked if we were actually there to do research. Apparently, they have perennial problems with daytripping tourists coming down and registering for a card just for souvenirs.

Card in hand, I made my way to the main reading room in the Jefferson Building. I turned in my request slips, and waited. It's telling that I waited over 40 minutes each time I submitted a request, but didn't really budge from my seat on the worn wooden benches. The reading room is huge, Aya Sofya huge, and centered around a massive, tiered desk like a little fortress of librarianship. (Oddly, the rib-high bulwark of the central desk made me think that a Muppet was going to pop up from behind it at any moment.) The circumference of the dome is studded with stained glass, the balconies are guarded by statues of intellectuals and abstracts. And, there are books. I'm not sure what I expected the Library of Congress to look like, but I consider those expectations exceeded.

I did get the book I wanted in the end-- an 1840 edition of Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake. I love that their collection is comprehensive enough that they can just toss a 160 year old book in the regular stacks. Around the LOC, "rare books" means three or four centuries old. They've got a Gutenberg 42-line Bible, for crying out loud. (I've seen it now-- it was in better shape than my Lady of the Lake.) I've got to go back there soon-- I wonder how old a copy of Sherlock Holmes I can get my hands on.

Had occasion to watch Lawrence of Arabia on a really big screen this afternoon (and part of the evening). It's the sort of film that makes me want to gather a bunch of people, mount camels, and take, say, Baltimore. (I'd give it right back, though-- lousy place to raise a camel.

One part of the screening that stood out to me was the "walk-in" music: something like an overture, but meant to be played while the audience was still filtering in from the lobby. There's a chunk of it before the film starts, and another before resuming after the intermission. Couldn't do such a thing today, of course-- there's more money to be made in showing trailers and commercials. There's something very civilized about the idea, though.

The transitions in media and mass media are something we talk about a lot in library sciences. There's a general trend towards wider distribution and smaller audiences (and screens), but I'm hoping that cinema-as-theater might have a future. Turn the cineplex into an all-loge seats venue, or go for increased service and luxury. If I can buy the latest blockbuster on a bootleg DVD and watch it on a hi-def TV at home, ye olde Odeon is going to have to offer something more than sticky floors and rows in which I can't stretch my legs.

In an old Bloom County strip, resident boy-genius Oliver Wendell Jones stands on the roof of his house, gazes up into the stars, and has an agnostic freak out. He hollers, "The universe is just a little too orderly to be one big accident!" Then he falls over and twitches a bit.

Ervin Laszlo, a Hungarian philosopher, agrees; but the way he puts it, the universe is a little too coherent. The observable universe behaves as if it had more matter connecting it than it does. Quanta that once have been entangled continue to relate to each other and affect each other despite separation. He talks a little about telepathy, too, but let's leave that out for the moment.

So, how does everything (really, everything in reality) coordinate despite the obstacles of time and space? Laszlo says the answer is in-formation. In-formation is different from mere information in that it isn't about an object, it defines an object; and in defining one object, in-formation makes it possible for a related object to be defined.

Okay, so how does in-formation get from one quantum to the next? In-formation is conveyed via something Laszlo calls the akashic field. The akasha, in Sanskrit/Hindu philosophy, is a sort of primoridal ether from which everything arose. It is everywhere, and everything is associated with it. If two particles have the right sort of association with each other, in-formation can pass from one to the other no matter how far apart they are. Citing data extrapolated from the EPR experiment, Laszlo is talking about communication between particles occuring at speeds apparently 20 to 20,000 times the speed of light. This apparently superluminal communication is possible because "distance" isn't a factor in the akashic field-- only relationship and entanglement matter.

Why is this quantum stuff, part of a Hungarian philosopher's attempt to create an "integrated theory of everything," of interest to information studies? Well, if the akashic field exists, and if humans could find a way to observe and interact with it (apart from being spawned by it, of course), it would be the ultimate network. The transmission of in-formation isn't affected by distance, matter, or vacuum. A true in-formation computer wouldn't even need circuits, per se: its processors, once associated with each other, subsequently could be spread over any distance and continue to function perfectly and instantly (really, instantly) via the akashic field. And if the akashic field exists, it's already installed everywhere.

Unfortunately, Laszlo can't offer a mathematical model of the akashic field just yet, and if he could, I probably haven't got the math to understand it. Still, if you're looking for support for your ansible, few books will support your hope as calmly and rationally as Science and the Akashic Field.