Everything is information at the base level
Earlier this year, I rewatched the TV series Devs. It left me with the same strange mix of emotions I felt the first time. At its core, the show explores the idea of determinism. It is unsettling, yet fascinating. And it reminded me of something I have been drawn to for a while: the idea that everything is information.
This perspective isn’t just a philosophical musing, it connects to ideas I’ve explored before. In my earlier post “The limit of everything” I discussed how the speed of light sets a fundamental constraint on our universe. This limit shapes how we experience reality. Similarly, the concept that everything is information touches on the basic structures of existence itself.
At first glance, “information” might sound like something abstract. But once you look closer, it’s everywhere. Matter and energy are patterns. DNA is information stored in a biological format. The weather is information expressed as shifting atmospheric states. Even our thoughts can be viewed as information flowing through neurons. Strip away the forms, and what remains is structure, signals, and relationships, in other words, information.
This perspective isn’t just science fiction. Physicist John Archibald Wheeler once said “It from Bit”. His idea was that every particle, every field of force, even spacetime itself, is ultimately based on informational yes/no choices. In a way, reality can be seen as a giant data structure.
Computing offers a helpful analogy. A computer doesn’t know what an image or a song means, to the machine, it’s all just data, long chains of 1s and 0s. Its power comes from how it processes that data and turns it into something meaningful to us: a movie, a melody, a conversation. From simple rules, whole digital worlds are created.
If reality is information at its core, then every moment flows through a vast network of patterns we are only beginning to understand.