Customer Reviews

The Bit and the Pendulum: From Quantum Computing to M Theory-The New Physics of Information

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I bought this book on the strength of the reviews here, which as it turns out are extremely misleading. Yes, this is a very interesting topic and I did learn a few things from the book. But I personally found this one of the most poorly written, vacuous books I have ever read. Siegfried has done a broad survey of how scientists have found it useful in various fields to conceive of things in terms of information. It is a promising project; the problem is that he has very little idea of how all this is connected. Worse, he barely explains any of the science. He doesn't even seem to understand it himself--at least when he discusses the areas I am familiar with his explanations are clearly off the mark--but assures us that it is all very important and technical. In lieu of explanation, he drops names, telling the reader over and over and over how he personally talked to so-and-so and they assured him something-or-other was true. In one particularly embarrassing moment, Siegfried actually prints a full page interview in which he asks one scientist several incoherent questions, to which the scientist replies (I'm not kidding), "I don't know how to answer that," suggests the questions are outside of his field, and says Siegfried has gotten his meaning wrong. There's not even enough in this passage to take notes on, yet Siegfried prints it verbatim. I don't mean to bash him--and I'm glad someone is taking an interest in this important topic--but I don't want others to be mislead by these other reviews.

When I read a review of this book in the New York Times, I thought this would be an interesting and informative presentation of the latest research in the field of quantum mechanics.

Unfortunatly it lacks depth in technical details and scientific description.

For example, the author seems to attribute to Murray Gell-Mann the notion of algorithmic complexity (p. 163): the complexity of a string of bits is measured by the shortest computer program capable of reproducing it. This is actually well known as the Kolmorov complexity. The author seems completly unaware of this. I remained largely eager to read somewhere else to learn more about the subject, since I could not find any precise description in that book.

This book can be taken as an apetizer, but do not expect good and reliable scientific description from it.

I knew absolutely nothing about quantum computing and initially found this book fascinating. But it left a couple of troubling questions. How could qubits do computations that are impossible with bits? How does one extract a solution from all the concurrent possibilities? So I did a search on qubits AND quantum AND information. I didn't look far enough to find a real algorithm, an answer to the second question, but immediately found an answer to the first. The answer is that they can -- if they work -- solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time; that is, they extend the power of computation in practive, but not in principle. Still no truth value for paradoxes, what a relief!

I am getting really annoyed with books by reporters, however knowledgeable, who waste pages obliquely describing equations and concepts that can easily be described clearly in a line or a couple of paragraphs. Does he really know what he is talking about? Whether or not the writer understands high school algebra, he certainly appears to assume that the reader does not. If you don't, you will have a hard time with this book anyway; if you do, you can learn more faster and free at your nearest friendly (i.e. not related to AOL) search engine.

Just as the clock defined society in medieval times, and the steam engine defined life in the nineteenth century, so the computer defines society today. But Tom Siegfried believes that the metaphor of the computer is much more profound than the tools of previous eras. In an interdisciplinary effort, Siefgried interviews some of the most renowned scientist and thinkers or our day to illuminate his belief that information is what the universe is made at the most fundamental level of reality. An interview with physicist John Wheeler, reinforces his hypothesis. Wheeler states that his view of the universe has changed over his lifetime. Initially, Wheeler believed that the most basic entity was the particle, then in later years, he believed that the universe was made up of fields, and now he believes, as does Siegfried, that everything is information. To state it another way, information is real-- a physical aspect of the universe as real as atoms. Wheeler, in turn, adddresses the quantum measurement problem. In a departure from a rising tide of opinion among scientists that quantum measurement merely selects a reality that already exists, he believes instead, that we are not acquiring information from the great void, but in actuality "creating" information out of a chaotic confusion of "yes--no" possibilities. Information is not an abstraction, but is always tied to something physical, whether it be ink on paper, holes in a punch card, magnetic patterns on floppy discs, or the arrangement of atoms in DNA. Information is always physical in some way. Just what constitutes an observer has been a controversial subject in quantum theory since the Copenhagen interpretation of reality. But Murray Gell--Mann, considered one of the deepest thinkers in the world of physics, maintains that an observer is simply a complex system that has the ability to compress information about their environment--an entity that can take bits and construct an algorithm from that information. From John Wheeler to Hugh Everett, from physics to biolgoy, Tom Siegfried makes a strong case for the hypothesis that information is physical.

Ever get the disturbing feeling that computers and video games and virtual reality are fogging up our view of the real world, the natural one with stars and gravity and grass and Pontiacs? This book won't set your mind at ease, but it will get you to thinking about information and whether our technological society's computers and other data-chomping, perception-bending devices are actually converging with the way the whole universe has worked all along. With a wonderful clarity of prose, science writer Tom Siegfried explores the idea that information itself, whether in a computer or embedded in tree rings or the vibrations on the sun's surface, is a component of the universe just as real as mass and energy. Physicists, he tells us, are learning that the rules of information theory sort of like those that the phone company uses to wire up its networks, apply to everything. A cell develops into a bee or a plant because of the information in its genes, a leaf flutters this way or that because of the "information" it gets from the breeze, and stars blow up and die because of the information in its core. Every event, they say, can be broken up into a logical string of yes and no questions and answers, and that's just like the ones and zeroes of binary computer code. Anyway, it's all darned interesting, and Siegfried manages to keep it pretty funny and light. He talked to and quotes a lot of weird, smart people. The book delves in the end into ideas that we need to explain all of physics with something called M-theory ("M" for membrane, or magic, or marvel ... nobody seems to agree exactly), in which our universe has an extra seven dimensions wrapped up somehow or other, and it all makes sense if you just think of the universe as a flow of information and all its pieces and waves as information transmitters and conduits. We have black holes swallowing information and never spitting it out and that gives these big brained M-brane experts fits. All in all a very thought-provoking story.

It is rare to see an author tackle such a rich and interesting subject, and write a book so vapid and lacking in content. The material is "explained" in terms of inept metaphors and vague hand-waving assertions. After devoting several hours to studying the book, the reader has the feeling that he's "been had", since he has acquired nothing in return for his effort. In fact, the author appears to have no more than the faintest grasp of the subject he is writing about.

I was reading my 11-year old a chapter from The Bit and the Pendulum this morning. Space, we learned, might be made up of elastic band-like things called superstrings. Or of loops. Or yet bubble-like entities called p-branes. My kid gleefully latched on to the p-brane thing, at least as a moniker with which to tease me on the way to school, but seemed less accepting of the notion that space might be made up by as many as 11 dimensions instead of the standard three. ("Yeah, right!" she said, with an adolescent roll of the eyes.)

Siegfried's book covers a wide sweep of topics: DNA, consciousness, quantum codes, chaos, complex adaptive systems, the nature of space, alternate universes...and more. The unifying theme of the book is "information"--which, he explains, stands as a metaphor, today, for scientific inquiry, the way the clock and the steam engine did in centuries past. Wilder than "information as metaphor," though, is the notion that information--instead of simply being something abstract--is something physical and real.

I didn't understand everything in the book, but I always like learning about the crazy world of quantum physics, where, for instance, the act of measuring a photon of light can set in stone the nature of another light photon somewhere else. (My kid and I didn't get around to discussing THAT strange business.) And I was fascinated by much that I learned.

Tom Siegfried, science editor at the Dallas Morning News, is one of the smartest science writers I know. He also--hallelujah--writes with a sense of humor. The Bit and the Peundulum is filled with wry little gifts to the reader that help pull you along when the theoretical going gets tough.

In this ground-breaking book, acclaimed science journalist Tom Siegfried introduces readers to the frontiers of the radical new physics of information, and to the host of amazing discoveries it is inspiring-from the development of a stunning new breed of quantum computers, to methods for writing supersecure codes, to revealing insights into the elaborate computer-like workings of the cell and resolving long-standing mysteries about the inner workings of black holes and how the universe evolved.

The revolutionary insight central to all of this new science is that the most fundamental constituents of matter are not atoms, or even subatomic particles, but "bits," the fundamental units of information. Scientists are exploring an all-encompassing new path towards understanding life, physics, and existence. The path leads through all of nature, from the interior of cells to inside black holes. The conclusion is always the same: the world is made of information.

Siegfried provides lucid and entertaining explanations of the latest theories in quantum physics and how they are being applied by quantum cryptographers to create secret codes that are absolutely unbreakable. We learn how the mind-boggling physics of "reversible logic" can recapture lost information and are introduced to the controversy over M Theory, which some scientists argue is the long-sought "Theory of Everything."

This books offers the lay reader an engaging, fast-paced introduction to a fundamentally new way of seeing the world and an amazing glimpse into many of the hottest areas of scientific endeavour today.

Tom Siegfried is the science editor of the Dallas Morning News. He is the recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Westinghouse Award for science journalism.

This is the great "as if ..." Siegfried the journalist does an admirable job of synthesizing the cutting edge of thought in many fields, adding his original interpretations where warranted. "These days, more and more of [the scientists Siegfried talks to] think the universe works like a computer."

The universe works as if it were a computer. But why should the universe work as if it were a computer? Siegfried bows to the weight of scientific culture in refusing to draw a conclusion, but his refutation of the Fredkin Hypothesis is probably not meant to be convincing. He allows the reader to add two plus two, and come out somewhere near the obvious: the universe works like a computer because it is a computer.

Despite its drawing back from the edge, this is a most useful book.

The book it is more of a journalistic review than a scientific primer. However, the author does a magnificent job at explaining difficult concepts of cutting-edge physics in an easy to understand manner. I like this book because of its depth and at the same time keeping coherence and organization, something not many scientific books can brag about. This is the layman's version of today and tomorrow's physics and their significance. Read it and enjoy!