Hidden In Plain Sight 9: The Physics Of Consciousness

by Andrew H. Thomas

Shannon stated that the amount of information, H, transmitted by a series of n characters is given by: where W is the size of the alphabet. Hence, for the previous ASCII example, the amount of information contained in a single ASCII character (setting n=1 for a single character) would be log2(128), which is equal to 7. The previous formula therefore tells us that the information transmitted by a single ASCII character is equal to seven bits of information.

information is not tied to any particular type of particle in the Standard Model. Information can be stored as fermions (as electrons stored in electronic memory, for example), or transmitted as photons (as electromagnetic radio signals, for example). Hence, information spans both the material and the immaterial.