The Diversity of Information Processing

The previous chapter should make it clear that in order to understand the evolution of the universe one must look to its base root: the evolution of information-processing systems. Looking at this evolution, it would come as no surprise that, after several thousand million years, many forms of information-processing systems (IPSs; the acronym was first used by Haefner (1988)) have emerged on this planet. This chapter will explore various IPSs to illustrate how advanced information systems have evolved different mechanisms to transmit information as messages, and to store such information in quite different and distinct forms.