"Organism is opposed to chaos, to disintegration, to death, as message is to noise. To describe an organism, we do not try to specify each molecule in it, and catalogue it bit by bit, but rather to answer certain questions about it which reveal its pattern: a pattern which is more significant and less probable as the organism becomes, so to speak, more fully an organism.
...
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water.
We are not stuff that abides, but patterns
that perpetuate themselves.
A pattern is a message...
We are not stuff that abides, but patterns
that perpetuate themselves.
A pattern is a message...
...
...and may be transmitted as a message. How else do we employ our radio than to transmit patterns of sound, and our television set than to transmit patterns of light? It is amusing as well as instructive to consider what would happen if we were to transmit the whole pattern of the human body, of the human brain with its memories and cross connections, so that a hypothetical receiving instrument could re-embody these messages in appropriate matter."- Norbert Wiener (1894 - 1964)
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society
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