The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life’s Unending Algorithm

Not sure what to do with this book. I abandoned it about 2/3 of the way through, because I felt like I was over my head and wasn’t understanding anything.

But, I was determined to “break it” (see this review of an explanation of that term). So, I dove back in, reading the introduction and conclusion, studying the index, reading the reviews on Amazon, listening to a podcast by the author, etc.

Here’s the gist –

• We create a lot of information.

• This information that we create (which is external to the information that is ourselves, encoded in our genetic material) is what the author called the “Dataome.”

• We don’t know why we’re creating this. It takes a shocking amount of work to maintain it.

• One possible answer is that the dataome is a lifeform in and of itself. It exists apart from us, and seeks to further its own expansion and existence, which is shades of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

• There are lots of examples in the book of how information begets information – the dataome continues to expand, inexorably, almost apart from human influence.

To be clear, the book is vague. I went through a bunch of Amazon reviews, and a lot of other people felt like the book was vague. But many of them felt like this was amazing, for some reason – “jaw dropping,” “thought provoking,” and all that.

Do I think there’s a “dataome.” Sure. I think there’s a huge body of information – the “noosphere” which exists apart of humans.

In an interview about the book, the author said:

The original idea came from my research in astrobiology on the nature of life in the universe and how we might find life elsewhere. Our biggest challenges are in figuring out what life really is, and, on top of that, what really counts as intelligence or technology. These puzzles got me thinking about how humans are unique on earth in terms of how we externalize information, carrying this extraordinary informational baggage around that’s not encoded in our DNA.

And that’s an interesting thought – as a species, humans seem to be the only one that externalizes information. We seem obsessed with creating a permanent record of it (the website you’re reading this one has close to 10,000 URLs of random content that I just…want…to…exist?).

But do I think that this information seeks to replicate itself as an alternate lifeform?

…I don’t know. That was a little harder to take?

Could it be that the dataome is just a reflection of humanity’s narcissism? We want to leave behind a trail of information like dog’s peeing on a lamppost?

No answers, really. Just questions.