The Birth of Information

Chapter 3. The Birth of Information

SLGW: the moment when the external world is first reflected within

3. 1. Up to This Moment

The first two chapters described life as a wholly material phenomenon. The organism builds itself from a description, unfolds cells into organs, organs into a whole body, and reproduces the description anew. Everything that happens in this is matter governing matter. The organism governs only its own organs.

Such an organism has no surrounding world. This sounds strange — for the world, obviously, exists. But for the organism itself the world does not yet exist. It reacts to its environment, but these reactions are closed within the body. Let us look closely at how they are arranged.

3. 2. A Signal Without Connections

A sensory cell, having caught a stimulus, sends a discharge — a spike. In the simplest arrangement this spike directly triggers a reaction: the receptor fired — the muscle contracted. One reflex arc, one response. Between the signal and the action there is no interval.

The main point here is that the spikes exist separately. Each on its own, each triggering its own reaction. Between a spike from one receptor and a spike from another there is no connection. They do not add up into anything common. There is a multitude of separate signals and a multitude of separate responses — but there is nothing that would unite them into a whole.

Such a spike does not “mean” anything. It carries no information about the world — it merely pushes the body into movement. This is still pure mechanics: a stimulus at the input, a movement at the output.

3. 3. The Jump: Spikes Are Placed on a Map

At some point the arrangement changes. An organ appears that ceases to pass spikes directly into a reaction. Instead it places each spike in a common space — sets it at the position corresponding to where the signal came from. A spike from one receptor and a spike from another are for the first time brought into relation: not because one caused the other, but because both now have a place in one space.

This space is a map. The spikes gathered on it cease to be a set of separate pushes and become a single reflection: a picture of what is around and where it is located. And this picture can be considered in itself, apart from any reaction.

This is precisely the birth of information. Not a new signal and not a faster response, but the appearance of an intermediate entity between the signal and the reaction — an assembled reflection that exists in itself.

The phenomenological jump consists in exactly this. Before, there were spikes with no connections to one another — pure mechanics. Now the spikes are placed on a common map, and this map is a reflection of the world. Before the jump only matter existed. After it, something appears within matter that is arranged not as matter but as information about it. Information appears.

The jump is sharp, like all transformations in Gativus. One cannot place spikes on a map “halfway”: either they exist separately and each triggers its own reaction, or they are gathered into a common space that reflects the world. There is no intermediate between these two states.

FIGURE 1: emergence of the second contour

The emergence of the second contour of life. The first contour is cellular matter (SEED → Cells → Organs → Organism, GTR0). The second contour is the informational reflection of the external world (the city), entering SLGW. The arrow from the city to the SLGW gateway is the raw external-world data for forming the second contour.

3. 4. The Two Contours of Life

With the appearance of reflection, a second contour arises in life. The first contour is everything that has been until now: cellular matter, the body that builds and reproduces itself. The second contour is the informational reflection of the external world, which the organism is now able to sense.

The two contours do not cancel each other out and do not exist apart. The second grows upon the first: the reflection lives in cells, matter remains its carrier. But the contours are arranged differently. The first deals with substance — cells, tissues, organs. The second deals with information about what is outside. It is precisely the appearance of the second contour that is the threshold for the sake of which this chapter is written.

3. 5. An Organ at the Boundary: SLGW

The organ in which reflection is born is arranged in two layers — and both layers must be distinguished. The lower layer is cells: ordinary living tissue, the product of that same biological transformation from the previous chapter. The upper layer is the map: spikes placed in a common space as a reflection of the world. One physical organ carries two ontologically different layers at once: matter below, information above. This is the first place in the architecture of life where they coexist.

This organ stands at the very boundary between two transformations and belongs to both at once. For this reason it is called a gateway — SLGW. From the side of the material level (GTR0) its map completes the construction of the organism; from the side of the informational level (GTR1) the same map serves as the input, the foundation upon which everything further will unfold. These are not two maps but one, read from two sides.

The map itself is designated MP00 in the Gativus architecture (from the GTR0 side). It is filled by a special operational network — one that receives the sensory stream and arranges the signals into their places. In essence this is a built-in mechanism for constructing a terrain map from a stream of observations — what in engineering is called SLAM. Hence the name of the organ: SLGW 0 — the SLAM gateway.

3. 6. The Map as Space and State

To understand how the map is arranged, it is useful to recall the definitions from the first chapter: a space is a system of dimensions, and a state is what is placed within those dimensions.

MP00 is a space. A three-dimensional voxel grid: the organism’s habitat space, ruled into cells. Each cell carries the simplest property — solid or hollow, occupied or passable. Hollow cells make up the volume in which the organism can reside and move; solid cells are the walls, obstacles, boundaries of this space. Thus the map becomes a map of passability: on it one sees where one can pass and where the way is closed.

[ INSERT FIGURE 2: ordering of spikes into a 3D-map-like structure ]

The ordering of arbitrary spikes into a structure analogous to a three-dimensional map.

When tactile spikes are placed on this grid, the state of the map changes, but not the map itself. The coordinates are the same, the ruling is the same — only the cells are filled. Therefore an empty and a filled map are not two different spaces but one space, MP00, in two states. This is important: filling the map is not a new transformation, because a transformation is a change of space, and here the space remains the same. Only what is placed within it changes.

3. 7. The First Memory

The MP00 map is not an instantaneous flash that vanishes when the signal changes. It is a held space: what is placed on it is preserved and available even when the source of the signal has already changed. And the holding of a reflection over time is precisely memory.

Here, on the MP00 map, memory is born for the first time. Not as a store of recollections of the past — for that there is as yet neither a subject nor concepts — but in its primary form: as a preserved map of the habitat space. Memory begins with space. The organism is for the first time able to hold “where what is located” — and this is the first kind of memory, out of which all the others will later grow.

3. 8. The Self-Sufficiency of the Organ

An organ with the MP00 map alone already works fully. The organism orients itself in its habitat space: it knows where there is an obstacle, where a passage, where it itself is. This is enough to live and move in the world — even before any recognition of individual things.

The next level will add to this map the recognition of objects: an object map will be laid over the spatial map. But this will be a superstructure over an already working organ, not a condition of its working. This is how the whole architecture of life is arranged: each level is built up on what below it already operates fully.

3. 9. What Is Not Yet Here

So as not to ascribe anything superfluous to this reflection, it is important to outline its limits. Memory is already here — but much is not yet.

There is no one here who sees. The map exists, but belongs to no one. There is no observer, no “I” that would look at this reflection. There is only the map itself, in tissue. The subject — the one who owns his reflection of the world — will appear considerably later, and with him a wholly different story will begin. But that is far ahead.

There are no objects here. The map says “what is where,” but not “what it is.” On it signals are placed and obstacles are marked, but not recognized things. The recognition of objects is the first task of the next level, and it is precisely this that will build an object map over the spatial one.

3. 10. The Threshold

With the appearance of the MP00 map, life crosses a threshold it had not crossed in all its preceding history. Before, there was only substance and isolated signals. Now, alongside substance, there is information — held, placed in space, already able to serve as memory, though still no one’s and still without recognized things. Life has gained the beginning of its second contour.

All the remaining content of this book — recognition, behavior, thought, will — unfolds in the second contour, as superstructures over the first map. Therefore it is precisely here, on the reflected space of the world, that the next transformation begins.