01.KO - Information is Physical
Domain: physics
Date: 2026-04-02
Claim: Information is widely treated in physics and information science as physically instantiated rather than as free-floating abstraction.
Problem: Processes involving information are widely treated as metaphor despite information being accepted as physical.
Why wrong: This creates a contradiction sustained by disciplinary compartmentalization and softness toward metaphor where physical grounding would be more accurate.
Why it matters: Real phenomena are treated as metaphor, and isomorphic structures overlooked, due to the glossing over of information as a physics-bearing concept.
Shorthand line: Treating information as “less-than-real” has downstream consequences on ethics and the accuracy of soft sciences.
Source Status:
- Original Analysis through logical deduction.
- Post-hoc Convergent Support — citation added post-hoc to confirm independently derived analysis
Sources:
- Rolf Landauer / IBM Research — Information is a physical entity
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-4371(98)00513-5 - Rolf Landauer / IBM Research — Information is physical
https://doi.org/10.1109/PHYCMP.1992.615478
Dependencies (Supports Idea):
03.KO - Information Inherits All of Physics