We Are Our Information: A conversation with Caleb Scharf

We are awash in data and information. So much so that we wonder if it has any meaning at all? But what if the very existence of the information and data was actually our society's knowledge. A kind of intuitive database acquired from absorbing all the information that surrounds us.

And as we do so, how does it change us? Are we even aware of it, or like velocity and position, can it even be measured.

These are just some of the mind bending ideas put forth by renowned astrobiologist and the award-winning author Caleb Scharf in his latest book The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm 

My conversation with Caleb Scharf:

We may be an insignificant and fleeting moment in time...and we know it

Conventional wisdom has long held that we live in a vast and indeed expanding universe, in which we humans are but a seemingly small and insignificant part.

But in that classic view, are we not giving ourselves enough credit? Perhaps we are more unique than we think. Perhaps we are not all that ordinary, on a not so ordinary rock in the vast cosmos.

Just maybe, that classic view, needs to be reexamined? That is what Caleb Scharf has done in his new book The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities.

My conversation with Caleb Scharf: