Information technologies
Daniel Boyd · 2024
This chapter discusses digital computers in the context of EIT, emphasizing how their informational nature contrasts with their superficial similarity to physical machines. It describes various forms of informational emergence such as the combination of eight-quirk binary strings to produce the colour violet. This chapter also highlights the challenges of designing systems composed of immense numbers of components, and how stratified functional emergence is exploited to overcome these challenges. It further explores the ‘digital community’ that has arisen through the connection of individual computers in networks spanning the globe. Here, we see fundamental differences between the topologies of the physical and information dimensions, with functional proximity being more relevant in the latter than physical distance. This chapter concludes with consideration of the implications of the increasing degree to which human experience and culture are coupled to and dependent on this non-physical realm.