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we are surrounded by order over the last

300 years we've developed amazing new

ways to harness energy and we've used

this ability to transform our

environment but all these structures

that we see around us are just one type

of visible order that we've created here

on planet earth there's another type of

invisible order every bit as complex

that we're only now beginning to

understand it's something that nature

has been harnessing for billions of

years something we call information

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the concept of information is a very

strange one it's actually a very

difficult idea to get your head round

but in the journey to try and understand

it scientists would discover the

information is actually a fundamental

part of our universe

this film is the story of information

and the immense power released from

manipulating it

it's the story of how we discovered the

power of symbols and how writing codes

and computers will revolutionize our

understanding of the universe is the

story of how in a cosmos collapsing into

disorder information can be used to

create order and structure

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at first glance information appears to

be a very straightforward idea it exists

everywhere in our world our brains are

filled with it and we constantly

exchange it between each other but

information has been one of the subtlest

and most difficult concepts that science

has had to grapple with understanding

and harnessing it has been an extremely

long and difficult process

the power of information would first be

glimpsed over 5,000 years ago when a

revolutionary technology was developed

one that would set the modern world in

motion

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over the years mankind has come up with

some pretty remarkable stuff but of all

humanity's inventions there's one that

really stands out it's the most

transformative disruptive creative

technology ever conceived and it's also

one of the simplest that invention is

the written word at its heart

writing is all about the transmission

and storage of information words allow

ideas to endure through time these are

some of the earliest texts in existence

and they give us an incredible insight

into the development of writing

I've come to meet one of the few people

who can still read them dr. Irving

Finkel we take writing so much for

granted these days that I guess it's

easy to forget that it was invented it

certainly was how did it first come

about the earliest writing that we have

is written on clay tablets and it comes

from Iraq ancient Mesopotamia and it

comes from the culture of the Sumerians

and what happened here was that they

started off with purely pictographic

signs to express an idea and this lasted

for quite a long time until it occurred

to somebody

perhaps accidentally that what you could

do is to make one of these graphic

symbols on the surface of the clay not

for what it looked like but for what the

sound it represented was so not a

picture of an object a picture of a

sound that's what we always called the

giant leap for mankind

by combining different sounding pictures

the ancient Mesopotamians could express

any idea imaginable the essence of their

breakthrough was to see for example that

a picture of an eye and a picture of a

deer didn't have to mean an eye and a

deer the pictures could be used simply

for the sounds they made in this case

idea

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once the system was discovered it meant

anything that could be spoken even the

most strange or abstract thoughts could

be transformed into symbols information

could now live outside of the human

brain

then this meant it could endure over

vast spans of time it was an idea that

fascinated the ancient Mesopotamians

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this lovely tablet here this king or now

who lived in about 2100 BC okay he

buried this in the foundations of this

temple as a message for the future this

king or now me was a powerful male king

of a king of Sumer and Akkad so that's

the South in the north part of ancient

Mesopotamia her house he built for her

and he even restored it afterwards so

this is the proud thing and he wants

everybody to know about it and this is a

real message for the future what's so

remarkable for me is that this is

information stored on clay for thousands

of years yes

ideas that someone had 4,000 years ago

are still there you have ideas you have

speech you have human hopes you have

literature you have prayers you have all

these sorts of outpourings of the human

soul fixed forever in clay

by turning sounds into symbols the

mesopotamian scribes had discovered that

information could be changed very easily

from one form to another from something

that existed as spoken sounds to

something that existed as symbols on

clay tablets but this was just the

beginning

humans were yet to realize the true

power of symbols

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for four thousand years writing was

pretty much the only information

technology people used but in the 19th

century during the great Industrial

Revolution things would begin to change

in the maelstrom of ideas and inventions

a series of seemingly unconnected

technologies would emerge that all began

to hint at the immense power of

information these technologies would all

come from very practical very unfit

achill origins but they would start to

reveal that information was a much

deeper and more powerful concept than

anyone had realized one of the first of

a new breed of information technologies

would be developed in the French city of

Lyon at the end of the 18th century 18th

century Lyon was home to some of the

best craftsmen in the world it was also

a place of great opulence grandeur and

above all money thanks to the rich and

fashionable aristocrats and bankers who

lived there it will become home to the

greatest silk weaving industry in the

world almost 1/3 of the city's

inhabitants worked in the silk industry

and it was home to over fourteen

thousand looms

this is brocade the material that made

Leon famous it's a beautiful and

intricately woven fabric that as you

might imagine is incredibly

labor-intensive to produce a two-man

team working flat out for a day could it

best produce about an inch of this

amazing stuff

the demand for the fine fabrics of Lyon

was immense but the silk weaving process

was painfully slow but thanks to a

soldier and Weaver named Joseph Marie

jacquard a device will be developed to

help speed up weaving in the process it

would reveal a fundamental truth about

information

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building on the work of a number of

others in 1804 jacquard patented his

invention at the time the loom was the

most complex mechanism ever built by

humankind

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jacquard loom was a miracle of ingenuity

you see he designed a single machine

which without any alteration to its

construction its hardware to use a

modern term could be programmed to weave

any pattern a designer could think up in

fact it could produce a whole range of

silk designs with barely a pause in

production jacquard had found the holy

grail of weaving and his secret was a

simple punched card

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the punched card held within it the

essence of the designs that the loom

would weave when these punched cards

were fed into the loom they would act to

lower and lift the relevant threads

recreating the pattern in silk

any design you could think of could be

broken down and translated into a series

of punch cards that could then be woven

by the loom

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information was being translated from

picture to punch card to the finished

fabric it is a machine for weaving

textiles that's its tasks but there is

nothing specific about what textile it

should weave that is contained in the

information which is encoded on the

cards so if you like the cards program

it that is to say instruct it what to do

and this has huge resonances for what

came later jacquard loom revolutionized

the silk industry but at its heart was

something deeper something more

Universal than its industrial origins

and its ability to speed up weaving the

loom revealed the power of abstracting

information it showed that you can take

the essence of something extract the

vital information and represent it in

another form writing had revealed you

could use a set of symbols to capture

spoken language now jacquard had shown

that with just two symbols a hole or a

blank space it was possible to capture

the information in any picture

imaginable

this is a portrait of jacquard that's

been woven in silk it's spectacularly

detailed with hundreds of thousands of

stitches and yet all the information you

need to capture this lifelike image can

be stored in a series of punched cards

24,000 of them to be precise

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this picture is a fantastic example of a

really far-reaching idea that the

simplest of systems in this case cards

with a series of holes punched in them

can capture the essence of something

much much more complicated if 24,000

punch cards could create an image like

this what would happen if you had 24

million or 24 trillion cards

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what new types of complex information

might be able to be captured and

represented jacquard had stumbled on an

incredibly deep and far-reaching idea

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as long as you have enough of them

simple symbols can be used to describe

anything in the entire universe

translating information into abstract

symbols to store and process had proven

to be an extremely powerful idea but the

way information was sent the way it was

communicated hadn't changed for

thousands of years the world before

telecommunications technology was a very

different place because you can only

send messages as fast as you could send

objects so you'd write a message on a

piece of paper or something like that

and then you'd either give it to

somebody who could run very fast or to

go on a horse or on a ship very fast but

the point was you could only send

information as fast as you could send

matter

but in the 19th century the speed which

information could be sent would

dramatically increase thanks to an

incredible new information carrying

medium electricity

very soon after electricity was

discovered excitement grew about its

potential as a medium to transmit

messages

it seemed that if it could be controlled

and summoned it will electricity would

be the perfect medium for sending

information electricity seemed to offer

many advantages as a way of sending

messages it was sent down a wire which

means it could pretty much go anywhere

it wasn't affected by bad weather

conditions and most importantly it could

move very quickly but there was one big

problem facing those in the early 19th

century who wanted to use electricity as

a means to communicate how could such a

simple signal be used to send complex

messages here in the Science Museum

archive they have one of the most

impressive collections of early

electronic communications technology in

the world here are just some of the

early devices designed to send signals

using electricity this one's

particularly fun it was developed in

1809 in Bavaria by Samuel summering so

if the sender wants to send a letter a

he sends a current through that

corresponding wire at the receivers end

is a tank full of liquid and the

electric current forces a chemical

reaction causing bubbles to appear above

the corresponding letter a the whole

process is ingenious if a little

laborious but what's really fun is that

the sender has to let the receiver know

he's about to send a signal he does that

by sending extra electric currents so

that more bubbles appear forcing an arm

upwards which releases a ball and

fingers about

as you can imagine this wouldn't be the

quickest of systems after summering all

sorts of approaches were taken in trying

to crack the problem of sending messages

using electricity that they all suffered

from having over complex codes these

devices each cunning and innovative in

its own way were all destined for the

scrap heap of history and that's because

in the 1840s

they were superseded by a way of sending

signals that still endures to this day

it was developed by artist and

entrepreneur Samuel Morse together with

his colleague Alfred Vail what was her

special about their system wasn't the

technology that was used to carry their

messages but the incredibly simple and

effective code they used to send him

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just like jacquards punchcards the

genius of Morse and vales code lay in

its simplicity using a collection of

short and long pulses of electrical

current they could spell out the letters

of the alphabet Vale suggested that the

most frequent letters in the English

language get the shortest code so an e

is sent like this while an X is sent

like this this means that messages can

be sent quickly and efficiently figuring

out the code part of it the software if

you like was as complicated as figuring

out the hardware side of things with the

batteries and the and the wires and

together they made an entirely new

technology which is the electric

telegraph the Telegraph had once again

revealed the power of translating

information from one medium to another

information had have first been fixed in

human brains then held in symbols in

clay and paper and punched cards

now thanks to Moore's information could

reside in electricity and this made it

unimaginably lighter and quicker than it

had ever been before in just a few short

years

The Telegraph Network would spread

around the entire globe laying the

foundations of the modern information

age

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between them jacquard and morse had

found new and novel ways to manipulate

process and transmit information what

had begun with the invention of writing

thousands of years ago had culminated in

the binding of the entire planet in a

lattice of wires carrying highly

abstracted information at incredible

speeds for people at the end of the 19th

century it may have seemed that

humanity's ability to manipulate and

transmit information was at its zenith

they couldn't have been more wrong

information would reveal itself to be a

more important more fundamental concept

than anyone could have imagined

it would soon become apparent that

information wasn't just about human

communication it was a much further

reaching idea than that the true nature

of information would first be hinted at

thanks to a strange problem one dreamed

up by a brilliant Scottish physicist who

appeared to be thinking about something

else entirely

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James Clark Maxwell was one of the great

minds of the 19th century among his many

interests

Maxwell became fascinated by the science

of thermodynamics the study of heat and

motion that had sprung up with the birth

of the steam engine

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Maxwell was one of the first to

understand that heat is really just the

motion of molecules the hotter something

is the faster it's molecules are moving

this idea would lead Maxwell to dream up

a very bizarre thought experiment in

which information played a crucial role

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Maxwell theorized that simply by knowing

what's going on inside a box full of air

it will be possible to make one half

hotter and the other half colder think

of it like building an oven next to a

fridge without using any energy

it sounds crazy but Maxwell's argument

was extremely persuasive it goes like

this imagine a small demon perched on

top of the box who has such excellent

eyesight that he could observe

accurately the motion of all the

molecules of air inside the box now

crucially is a control of a partition

that divides the box into two halves

every time he sees a fast-moving

molecule approaching the partition from

the right hand side he opens that

allowing it through to the left and

every time he sees a slow moving

molecule approaching the partition from

the left he opens it up allowing the

molecule through to the right now you

can see what's going to happen over time

all the fast moving hot molecules will

accumulate on the left-hand side of the

box and all the snow moving cold

molecules on the right crucially the

demon has done this sorting with nothing

more than information about the motion

of the molecules

Maxwell's demon seemed to say that just

by having information about the

molecules you could create order from

disorder this idea flew in the face of

19th century thinking the science of

thermodynamics had shown very clearly

that over time the entropy of the

universe its disorder would always

increase things were destined to fall

apart but the demon seemed to suggest

that you could put things back together

without using any energy at all just by

using information you could create order

it would prove to be a fiendishly

difficult problem to solve not least

because the brilliant Maxwell had come

up with an idea far far ahead of its

time

it's amazing the impact he had on

physics and that he came up with this

guy intricate concept and that he

already in some sense pre were

anticipated the the notion of

information that wasn't actually there

at that time there was no such thing I

think this idea was was astonishing he

didn't really have a resolution he

raised it as a as a concern and he left

it open and I think what followed is

more or less hundred and twenty years of

extremely exciting debates and

developments to try to resolve and

address this concern

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so what was going on with Maxwell's

demon it may sound far-fetched and

fanciful but imagine the possibilities

if we could build a machine in the real

world that could mimic the actions of

the demon I could use it to heat a cup

of coffee or to run an engine or to

power a city all using nothing more than

pure information it's as though it could

create order in the universe without

expending any energy scientists felt

intuitively that it had to be wrong the

problem was it would take over a hundred

years to solve the problem

while Maxwell's riddle rumbled on

something quite unexpected was to happen

a new device was dreamt up that could

perform quite incredible and complex

tasks simply by processing information

what's more this was a device that could

actually be built the machine would come

to be known as the computer and the idea

behind it came from a quite remarkable

and visionary scientist

Alan Turing was the first person to

conceive of the modern computer a

machine whose sole function is to

manipulate and process information the

machine that harnesses the power of

abstract symbols a machine that enables

almost every aspect of the modern world

Turing's incredible idea would first

appear in a now legendary mathematical

paper published in 1936 in his brief

life Alan Turing brought fresh

groundbreaking ideas to a whole range of

topics from cryptography through to

biology the sheer breadth of his

thinking is breathtaking but for most

scientists it's the concept he outlined

in these 36 pages that mark him out as

truly special it's this work that makes

him worthy of the title genius

published when churring was just 24

years old on computable numbers with an

application to the insurance problem

tackles the foundations of mathematical

logic what's amazing about it is that

the idea for the modern computer emerged

simply as a consequence of Turing's

brilliant reasoning it was thinking

about something else entirely he wasn't

you know sort of sitting there thinking

I want to try and invent the modern

computer he was thinking about this very

abstract problem in the foundations of

mathematics and the computer kind of

fell sideways out of that research

completely unexpectedly I mean nobody

could have guessed that Turing's you

know very abstract abstruse research in

the foundations of mathematics could

produce anything of any practical value

whatsoever let alone a machine that was

going to change the lives of you know

nearly everyone on the planet Turing had

set out to understand if certain

processes in mathematics could be done

simply by following a set of rules and

this is what would get him thinking

about computers

in 1936 the word computer had a very

different meaning to what it does today

it meant a real person with a pencil and

paper engaged in arithmetic elations

banks hired many such people often women

to work out interest payments the Inland

Revenue employed them to work out how

much tax to charge observatories hired

them to calculate navigational data

human computers were vital to the modern

world dealing with the huge amounts of

information produced as science and

industry grew ever more complex what

cheering did in his 1936 paper was asked

a simple but profound question what goes

on in the mind of a person carrying out

a computation to do this he first had to

discard all the superfluous details so

that only the very essence of the

process of computation remained so first

off when the inkpot then the pen then

the slide rule then the pencils and the

pads of paper all these things made it

easier but none of them were absolutely

crucial to the person carrying out the

computation

now Turing asked what goes on in the

brain of a human computer it's a vastly

complex biological system capable of

consciousness thoughts and insights but

to curing none of these was critical to

the process of computation either Turing

realized that to compute something a set

of rules had to be followed precisely

that was all

it takes the higher-level intelligence

that was presupposed to be involved in

calculation which is thinking and says

you can have a mechanical process that

is and by mechanically means an

unthinking process to perform the same

act and therefore eliminates you know at

the necessity of human agency with all

its high-level level functions and that

is what is revolutionary about what he

tries to do

Turing's brilliant mind saw that any

calculation had two aspects the data and

the instructions for what to do with the

data and this will be the key to his

insights during had to find a way of

getting machines to understand

instructions like add subtract multiply

divide and so on in the same way that

humans do in other words he had to find

a way of translating instructions like

these into a language that machines

could understand and with flawless

impeccable logic Turing did exactly that

this may look like a random series of

ones and zeros but to a computing

machine it's a set of instructions that

can be read off step by step telling the

machine to behave in a certain way so

while a human computer could look at

this symbol and understand the process

that was required the computing machine

had to have it explained like this this

paper tape that shirring envisaged is

what we would now call the memory of the

computer but Turing didn't stop there

Turing realized that feeding and machine

instructions in this way had an amazing

consequence it meant that just one

machine is needed to perform almost any

task who can think of it's a beautifully

simple concept in order to get the

machine to do something new all you had

to do was feed it a new set of

instructions new information this idea

became known as the universal Turing

machine the more you wanted your machine

to do the longer the tape had to be

bigger memories could hold complex

multi-layered instructions about how to

process and order any kind of

information imaginable with a big enough

memory the computer will be capable of

an almost limitless number of tasks this

idea of Turing's that a multitude of

different tasks can be carried out

simply by giving a computing machine a

long sequence of instructions is his

greatest legacy since his paper showing

his dream has been realized

so calculations making phone calls

recording moving images writing letters

listening to music

all of these require bespoke machines

they can all be carried out on a single

device a computing machine this phone is

a modern incarnation of Turing's amazing

idea inside here are many many

instructions what we'd call programs or

software or apps there are nothing more

than a long sequence of numbers telling

the phone what to do what's amazing

about Turing's idea is its incredible

scope the sets of instructions that can

be fed to a computer could tell it how

to mimic telephones or typewriters but

they could also describe the rules of

nature the laws of physics the processes

of the natural world

this is a simulation of many millions of

particles behaving like a fluid to work

out how it flows the computer simply

follows a set of instructions held in

its memory this only begins to hint at

the power of computing machines

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this is a computer simulation of the

large-scale structure of the entire

universe and it reveals the true power

of Turing's idea turning instructions

into symbols that a machine can

understand allows you to recreate not

just a simple picture or sound but a

process a system something that is

changing and evolving by manipulating

simple symbols computers are capable of

capturing the essence the order of the

natural world itself

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by thinking about how the human brain

processes and computes information Alan

Turing had had one of the most important

ideas of the 20th century the power of

information was revealing itself

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it will be very easy to think that after

Turing's ideas were made real the true

power of information would be unleashed

but churring was only half the story the

modern information age would require

another idea one that would finally pin

down the nature of information and its

relationship to the order and disorder

of the universe it was an idea that will

be dreamt up by a gifted and eccentric

mathematician and engineer

Claude Shannon was a true maverick and

his desire to tackle unusual problems

would lead to a revolutionary new idea

one that would uncover the fundamental

nature of information and the process of

communication in all its varied forms

this is Claude Shannon's paper a

mathematical theory of communication now

the title may sound a bit dry but trust

me it's one of our most important

scientific papers of the 20th century

not only did it lay the foundations for

the modern world's communication network

it also gave us fresh insights into

human language into things we do

intuitively like speaking and writing

the paper was published in 1948 while

Shannon was working at the Bell Labs in

New Jersey the research arm of the vast

Bell Telephone Network it was an

institution famous for his

forward-thinking relaxed atmosphere the

mathematicians were free to work on any

problem that interested them the only

thing that the laboratory management

required of them is that they keep an

open door and if anybody from any other

department came with a problem that they

would at least think about it otherwise

they were absolutely free and the

atmosphere the atmosphere was incredible

people were playing and encouraged to

play Lord Shannon in particular was

given free rein to do pretty much

whatever he wanted an electrically

controlled Mouse

oh they treated him as the darling I

never saw him juggle but I certainly saw

him right as unicycle he brought it to

work one day and he must of course Bell

Labs at at least a hundred man hours of

time but despite the frivolity the Bell

Telephone Network faced a huge problem

every day they transmitted vast amounts

of electronic information all across the

world but they had no real idea of how

to measure this information properly or

how to quantify it in short their entire

business was built on something they

didn't actually understand amazingly

their superstar employee Claude Shannon

would give them exactly what they needed

[Music]

in this paper Shannon did something

absolutely incredible

he took the vague and mysterious

concepts of information and managed to

pin it down now he didn't do this using

some cleverly worded philosophical

definition he actually found a way to

measure the information contained in a

message amazingly Shannon realized that

the quantity of information in a message

had nothing to do with its meaning

instead he showed it was related solely

to how unusual the message was

information is related to unexpectedness

so news is news because it's unexpected

and the more unexpected it is then more

newsworthy it is so if today's news was

the same as yesterday's news day there

would be no news at all and the

information content would be 0 so sudden

you have a relationship between

unexpectedness and information but

Shannon was to go further and give

information it's very own unit of

measurement so how did he do this well

he showed that any message you care to

send could be translated into binary

digits a long sequence of ones and zeros

so a simple greeting like Hello could be

written like this or like this just

think of this as another way of writing

the same message

[Music]

Shannen realized that transforming

information into binary digits would be

an immensely powerful act it would make

information manageable exact

controllable and precise

[Music]

in his paper Shannon showed that a

single binary digit one of these ones or

zeros is a fundamental unit of

information think of it as an atom of

information the smallest possible piece

then having defined this basic unit he

even gave us a name for it one we're all

familiar with today

he used a shortening of the phrase

binary digit bit the humble bit turned

out to be an enormous leap our falaya

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the bit is the smallest quantity of

information it is highly significant

because it's the fundamental item it is

the smallest unit of information in

which there is sufficient discrimination

to communicate anything at all

the power of the bit lay in its

universality

any system that has two states like a

coin with heads or tails can carry one

bit of information 1 or 0 punched or not

punched on or off stopped or go all of

these systems can store one bit of

information

thanks to Shannon the bit became the

common language of all information

anything sounds pictures text can be

turned into bits and transmitted by any

system capable of being in just two

states

[Music]

shannon had founded a new far-reaching

theory the ideas he began to explore

would form the cornerstone of what we

now call information theory he taken an

abstract concept information and turn it

into something tangible what had been

just a vague notion was now measurable

something real the idea of converting

into bits into making things digital

would fundamentally transform many

aspects of human society

but information isn't just something

humans create we're beginning to

understand that this concept lies at the

heart not only of 21st century human

society but also at the heart of the

physical world itself every bit of

information we've ever created every

book every film the entire contents of

the internet amounts to pretty much

nothing when compared with the

information content of nature and that's

because even the most insignificant

event contains a spectacular amount of

information let me show you

[Music]

imagine how many bits of information you

would need to describe this

[Music]

the beautiful and intricate interplay of

physical laws taking place at scales and

timeframes that are normally

imperceptible to us

[Music]

but here you're still only seeing a

fraction of the complexity of nature

[Music]

imagine the interplay between the

trillions upon trillions of atoms the

amount of bits you would need to

describe this is almost unimaginable but

what's amazing is that now thanks to the

ideas of Turing and Shannon we're able

to describe model and simulate nature in

ever greater detail but this isn't the

end of the story information it seems

isn't just a way of describing reality

in the last few years we've discovered

that information is actually an

inseparable part of the physical world

[Music]

it's a really difficult idea to get to

grips with but information everything

from a Beethoven symphony to the

contents of a dictionary even a fleeting

thought all information needs to be

embodied in some form of physical system

amazingly the reason we understand the

true connection between information and

reality is because of Maxwell's demon

remember it seemed like the demon could

use information to create order in a box

of air that started out completely

disordered moreover it could do this

without expending any effort information

seemed to be able to break the laws of

physics well that's not true it can't

[Music]

the reason why Maxwell's demon can't get

energy for free lies here in his head

what was discovered was this the demon

really is using nothing more than

information to create useful energy but

this doesn't mean that he's getting

something for nothing

remember how the demon works he spots a

fast-moving molecule on one side of the

box opens a partition and lets it

through to the other side but each time

he does that he has to store information

about that molecule speed in his memory

soon his memory will fill up and then he

can only continue if he starts deleting

information crucially this deletion

would require him to expend energy the

demon needs to keep a record of which

molecules are moving where and if the

record-keeping device is only finite

size at some point the daemons gonna

have to erase it

that's an irreversible process that

increases the entropy of the universe

it's the erasure of information that

increases entropy once and for all what

was discovered is that there's a certain

specific minimum amounts of energy known

as the land hour limit that's required

to delete one bits of information it's

tiny less than a trillion trillionth of

the amount of energy in a gram of sugar

but it's real it's a part of the

fundamental fabric of the universe

amazingly we can now do real experiments

that test aspects of Maxwell's idea by

using lasers and tiny particles of dust

scientists around the world have

explored the relationship between

information and energy with incredible

accuracy

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Maxwell's thought experiments dreamt up

in the age of steam still remains at the

cutting edge of scientific research

today

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Maxwell's demon links together two of

the most important concepts in science

the study of energy and the study of

information and shows that the two are

profoundly linked what we now know is

that information

far from being some abstract concept

obeys the same laws of physics as

everything else in the universe

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information is not just an abstraction

just a mathematical thing or formula

that you write on the paper actually

information is carried by something so

it's encoded onto something a stone a

book a CD whatever there's a carrier

where the informations on and that means

that information behaves according to

those laws of physics so it can all

break the laws of physics what humanity

has learnt over the last few millennia

is that information can never be

divorced from the physical world

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but this is not a hindrance

what makes information so powerful is

the fact it can be stored in any

physical system we choose from using

stone and clay to allow information to

be preserved over eons - using

electricity and light so it can be sent

quickly the medium that stores

information gives it unique properties

today

scientists are exploring new ways of

manipulating information using

everything from DNA to quantum particles

they hope that this work will usher in a

new information age every bit as

transformative as the last

what we now know is that we're just at

the beginning of our journey to unlock

the power of information

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it's always been clear that creating

physical order the structures we see

around us has a cost we need to do work

to expend energy to build them but in

the last few years we've learned that

ordering information creating the

invisible digital structures of the

modern world also has an inescapable

cost as abstract and ethereal as

information seems we now know it must

always be embodied in a physical system

I find this an incredibly exciting idea

think about it this way a lump of clay

can be used to write a poem on molecules

of air can carry the sound of a symphony

and a single photon is like a paintbrush

every aspect of the physical universe

can be thought of as a blank canvas

which we can use to build beauty

structure and order

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