Preservation of information - hard and static or soft and dynamic?

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Steve3007
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Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Preservation of information - hard and static or soft and dynamic?

Post by Steve3007 »

It seems to me that these are the two different ways in which information is preserved and structure is protected from deterioration or damage. Hard and static or soft and dynamic. The former is perhaps best exemplified by the proverbial "tablets of stone" or the pyramids of Giza. The latter by DNA. But the principle can be seen in numerous places.

I was watching a nature documentary recently and it contained a slow-motion close-up shot of a cat diving into some long grass in pursuit of a mouse. I was struck by how delicate and fragile the cat's eyes are and how easily they could have been damaged by doing things like this. But the cat is a an exquisitely reactive dynamic system which protects them, as well as the rest of its soft easily damaged body, by constant very quick and delicate sense and movement.

As we humans have designed machines for such diverse purposes as locomotion and information storage we have, it seems, been gradually shifting from hard and static to soft and dynamic. From statically stable armoured tanks to dynamically stable walking robots. From tablets of stone to "the cloud" - an abstract medium-independent concept of information storage.

As the information preserved for billions of years in DNA shows, soft and dynamic, as a general principle, wins in the end. Nothing hard and static lasts anywhere near that long. Constant reproduction and consequent decoupling from dependence on the nature of the physical medium is the long term way to preserve information. Constant reaction to the environment is the best way for an artificial or biological machine to defend itself from damage and keep itself upright.

Do you think that machines designed by humans will eventually go all the way down the soft and dynamic route? If there is a logical end-point to this route, what do you think it is?
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LuckyR
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Re: Preservation of information - hard and static or soft and dynamic?

Post by LuckyR »

Well, if you include genetic engineering as an example of "designing", then: yes.
"As usual... it depends."
Steve3007
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Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: Preservation of information - hard and static or soft and dynamic?

Post by Steve3007 »

Maybe eventually genetic engineering and the designing of biology-inspired machines will meet in the middle.
Jklint
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Joined: February 23rd, 2012, 3:06 am

Re: Preservation of information - hard and static or soft and dynamic?

Post by Jklint »

Being an ignorant hick, the only question that follows "in my mind" on the supposed preservation of information as if eternally archived is what would be its purpose. Are these archives of information eventually to be reopened, recycled and forged into new manifestations to recreate the same, somewhat modified or new playlist?

Would it also mean that all the life ever lived, human or not simply becomes another entry within that cosmic info library? Is there nothing which gets excluded?

What would the significance of all that, even if true, be for us anyways? Is it meant to connote some form of afterlife or salvation?

Never could figure out how this preservation of information is supposed to, in whatever form, re-manifest itself!

Information usually comes AFTER creation. Should creation already contain everything which follows the initial event and just play itself out like a vinyl recording, its "edges" of beginning and end existing simultaneously?

These questions are merely hypothetical and rhetorical but they do come to mind when discussing the subject.
Steve3007
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Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: Preservation of information - hard and static or soft and dynamic?

Post by Steve3007 »

Jklint wrote:Being an ignorant hick, the only question that follows "in my mind" on the supposed preservation of information as if eternally archived is what would be its purpose. Are these archives of information eventually to be reopened, recycled and forged into new manifestations to recreate the same, somewhat modified or new playlist?
Did you interpret the OP as a proposition that some form of information should be eternally archived? That seems to be the implication of your question. That wasn't the intention of the OP. The intention was simply a discussion of the different forms in which information is preserved.
Jklint
Posts: 1719
Joined: February 23rd, 2012, 3:06 am

Re: Preservation of information - hard and static or soft and dynamic?

Post by Jklint »

Yes, you are right! I misread for which I apologize. I was thinking more in terms of how information within a cosmic reality supposedly never gets destroyed but is somehow forever preserved. This, clearly was not what your post was referring to. I’ll attribute this faux pas to an occasional bout of insomnia.

I reread your post a few times and think I may have a reasonable idea of what you mean in response to which is the following revised version.
Steve3007 wrote: January 3rd, 2019, 11:27 am As the information preserved for billions of years in DNA shows, soft and dynamic, as a general principle, wins in the end. Nothing hard and static lasts anywhere near that long.
For one thing, I don’t think “hard and static” are necessarily allied or equate to each other in the way you seem to use it. In hard drives are platters which can be magnetized to contain the information. A solid state drive is another example maintaining information on a medium which is in itself hard and static. What’s dynamic here is the information recorded. Conversely, DNA does not preserve information for billions of years. After one million years it’s nearly or wholly unreadable. What’s dynamic here is the erosion of information.
Steve3007 wrote: January 3rd, 2019, 11:27 amConstant reproduction and consequent decoupling from dependence on the nature of the physical medium is the long term way to preserve information.
Don’t know exactly how to interpret this. All that exists is “physical” in any and all forms without which information couldn’t even exist. There is no escape from the physical medium whether it creates information or records it.

Anyways, since I’m not certain whether I’m on the right track in my interpretation of what you mean, I’ll stop here.
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