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

Astronomer Scharf (Gravity’s Engines) offers a bold new perspective on the relationship between humans and information in this spirited consideration of data as a motivating force in humans’ lives. Scharf introduces a concept called the “dataome,” similar to a genome, or “all of the non-genetic data we carry externally and internally” and which encompasses “William Shakespeare’s works and their progeny, as well as everything else that we know of human information.” All such data is information requiring energy to create, store, and access. The dataome, he writes, has “insinuated itself into our most basic survival needs” and acts on humans with its own demands, pointedly for energy. (Scharf notes that by 2040, the world’s computer chips “will demand more electricity than is expected to be produced globally.”) Combining evolutionary biology, thermodynamics, information theory, and artificial life, Scharf builds a case that data and information are much more than an extension of human activity—they’re an emerging life form unto itself, evolving symbiotically alongside humanity, and “the ebb and flow of data” marks all life. Scharf’s provocative thesis is sure to shake things up for readers with an interest in humans’ relationship to data. (June)