El advenimiento del microcosmos

Название книги: Microcosm The Quantum Revolution In Economics And Technology . Pagina 30

Автор: Gilder, George -

Ключевые слова: Filosofia Ensayo

The “informativeness” of subatomic matter is the key to modem electronics. Because the world of the microcosm consists not of inert and opaque solids but of vibrant, complex, and comprehensible fields, it constitutes a useful arena for modern information technology. It is because there is so much analogical information in the microcosm that the microcosm is a uniquely powerful medium for information.The quantum-regulated movement of electrons across quantum-mapped crystalline paths epitomizes information technology, and in-formation technology epitomizes the quantum era.

In the atom of information, this era acquires its definitive symbol. What was once a blank solid is now revealed in part as information, what was once an inert particle now shines with patterns and probabilities, what was once opaque and concrete is now a transparent tracery of physical laws. Far from plunging reality into clouds, quantum theory makes the universe radically more intelligible. The new science does not estrange human beings from their environment. Since thought is the most distinctly human power, the quantum world is actually more anthropomorphic than the world of Newtonian masses and forces.

A more intelligible universe, penetrable by the human mind, endows people with greater power to create wealth. But it also radically changes the way wealth is created. Throughout previous human history, the creation of wealth depended chiefly upon the extraction, transport, combination, and modification of heavy materials against the resistance of gravity, the constraints of entropy, and the constrictions of time and space. When things are large and approached out-side-in, it is expensive to move and manipulate them. Their costs derive from the weight, rarity, entropy, and resistance of their matter. But small things, virtually devoid of matter, move less like weights than like thoughts. In the microcosm, the costs of fuel and materials decline drastically; the expense devolves from matter to mind. Just as quantum science overthrew Newtonian matter in the explanation of the universe, the quantum economy overthrows Newtonian matter in the creation of new wealth.