INFORMATION

What is information—really? We use the word every day, from DNA and brains to timetables and computers, yet its meaning remains strangely elusive. In Information, Dr John Williams offers a clear, unifying explanation: information is what determines the outcome of interactions, and it is held in the pattern—the spatial arrangement—of matter. Tracing a path from the earliest moments of the universe through chemistry, emergence, and the rise of living systems, the book reframes life as an information process: the ability to organise matter by copying and creating patterns. The same lens then illuminates modern computing and the accelerating shift toward artificial intelligence as a new kind of information machine. • Two proposals that define information as rules of interaction and as pattern • How emergence creates new informational levels—from atoms to organisms • Why DNA, brains, and language are powerful “transferred information” systems • What an information-centred view suggests about evolution, control, and AI Accessible, provocative, and wide-ranging, this is a case for information as a fundamental feature of reality—and a guide to seeing patterns, life, and technology as parts of one continuous story.