The Cosmic Computer

The Cosmic Computer

Mankind has progressed through many centuries that have been termed chronologically as different ages: Stone, Iron, Industrial, Scientific and today in our era they are all crowned by the Information Age.

But here, and now, in this age we have a conflict in World views between the old and the new, which is rarely ever referred to. 

That most people think that there be a natural progression from the Scientific World View to the Information World View.

Einstein famously said that "God does not play dice" when confronted by the essential "indeterminacy" of the Quantum World. It is often thought that Einstein's view was outdated, and that it had been superceded by a new generation of Scientists drawn from a Darwinian perspective, that was gaining credence in the life sciences, that essentially random processes could account for much of the complexity that we find in our World.

But the greatest achievement of our New World is not the splitting of the Atom, where the hopes of limitless tapable energy have been continually dashed, but it is the Internet, the Interconnected Web of Computers and the impact that these have had, and continue to develop and have, on each our lives.

When we look at the developments within that technology, its timeline does not give way to an inspirational way of explaining what happened.

Many people would mark out the development of the transistor as the defining breakthrough.

But it is not the computability of things that really defines the power of what you hold in your hand on a daily, if not hourly basis. 

It is the fact that it can efficiently store and retrieve information.

This is not to say that the computer is simply a glorified filing cabinet, but the internet's capacity to share has made all of us producers and manufacturers of content, and consequently also its consumers.

Is that not where the true power of the computer, and even the internet belongs?

Even when we get down to the nuts and bolts of computability, we come across a startling realisation.

Knowledge progresses in the direction of known to unknown, and not in the reverse direction.

And so when we look at the computability of computers, that they have the ability to compute, then we should know that they simply mimic what we do, except a billion times more efficiently.

So for example when I calculate a simple sum, the defining characteristic is that I must hold two numbers in my memory at the same time and then follow a set procedural rule, called for argument sake an algorithm. 

The algorithm itself is also stored within my memory accessed when required in response to cues that I look for.

This is simply what a computer does: it stores many algorithms within its memory and searches for cues about which to use.

But the essential characteristic of matter that allows all of this to happen, actually has an origin, in our understanding of the World, before the invention of the transistor. 

And it is for this reason that its incredible impact on our future is completely underrated.

Thomas Eddison around the 1870s conducted an experiment that most people dismissed because it was not concerned with the nature of reality, as is most of science, but was directed towards a specific commercial ends.

Eddison was an inventor whose work with the telegraph and telephony led him to explore the possibilty of not just transmitting information but of storing it as well, unusally his experiment dealt directly with sound and not with it's symbols. 

Even more unusally whilst he used a solid brass cylinder wrapped in tinfoil to record sound vibrations, he then found that he could reproduce them. This lead to the development of Phonography, and by extension it could be argued film and video imagery. 

That matter has this ability to store and then retrieve information appears to be even more fundamental than the quantum idea of indetminancy.

And that in a nutshell is the burgeoning information age, that even Shrodinger's cat has to do obeisance to, irrespective that is of whether it lives or dies.

In the revelation sent to Muhammad (saw) we find that most Muslim's focus on the Surah of Purity, because it describes that Oneness of God, and the fact that He has neither son, nor is He the son of any, and that there is None like the One, incomparable. 

And that we know from a Prophetic tradition that it is like a third of the Quran.

But a tradition, possibly weak in transmission, but strong in content has is it that Zalzalah, a Chapter of the Quran, is like half of it.

Zalzalah is named after the convulsions that will happen to the Earth at the hour. Here the imagery is of the Earth having to bear the burdens of the crimes committed by man whilst they resided on her, and when belief disappears and the hour approaches, she convulses giving them up.

And in the last two verses God relates upon the nature of this World, that whoso does an atoms weight of good will see it, and who does any atoms weight of evil will see it.

That our actions are recorded, and that information is not lost, but will be retreived.

Now in this age of Men, we know that that is not so outlandish as many would have before presumed.

That the essential characteristic of nature is memory.

That God is moral, high above all, the One that loves to do good, and loves for you to do good too.

Knowledge is through study and contemplation.
And I write to encourage you towards those ends.

Addendum. 

If the essential nature of reality is the storage of information, then the analogy of a cosmic computer is not so far fetched. And then we must ask ourselves the pertinent question - what message is contained witihn it, if not that God is the Originator, the Most Merciful?

ADDENDUM ^ 2

The Messenger of God (saw) informed us in regards to the greatest verse, sign of God, contained within the Quran:

The Ayah of the Kursi is not concerned with God being the Fatir, the Originator of the Heavens and the Earth. Nor with His Power, but essentially with Him being the keeper of knowledge, and He gives it to whom He wills and blesses them with a belief which is true and sure.