Physics of Life


Communication physics is the study of the energy and matters of life.

Since, even before Albert Einstein (1879-1955) famously connected energy with matter, the ruling assumptions of the Western mind have largely omitted or left unexplained, a complexity of phenomena that both relativity and quantum science identified.

Today, this disconnect between science and humanity, is the subject of a new science of communication physics.

This art-science (see blog, Artist-Scientists) explores outdated models of human conception, reductive traditional explanation and flawed reasoning, using the multidimensional lens of communicative interaction and values.

  Communication physics views everyday misconceptions built into an old model of human reason and affairs, as reducing human ability to change, even in the face of great risk to Planetary Life (see blog, Global Catastrophic Risks).

  Traditional misassumptions alongside reductive reasoning, actually perpetuate enormous human anxiety and cause a massive reduction of intelligent response across our new digital civilization.

These systemic failures threaten our collective ability to change in the light of these risks.

Or indeed, allow us to protect the 50% of humanity still outside the digital network, or the quadrillions of lifeforms that we depend on for our lives.

A physics of communication which is also a physics of life, is a new grounding, or starting point, to revalue the ruling assumptions of an outdated and self-destructive view of our one, Living World: although paradoxically, our many Life Worlds.

Incidentally, ‘the one and the many’ is an ancient discourse now revived in communication ethics and physics, in searching for new ways of imaginative conception capable of dealing with complexity.

Dangerously today, oudated belief in a single, unilinear model of reality, what is called the ‘classical worldview’, no science or human ingenuity has been able to move-fully, out of mainstream, or collective reason.

Now, new forms of collective intelligence require to be re-learned by every citizen, for themselves, aided by new sciences, such as communication ethics and physics.

As sciences these are not owned by anyone, they offer their own methods and applications to anyone capable of learning. That is all citizens.

And each new science is applied through dialogue, testing and multimedia publication, so that all citizens can be sure of their own reasoning and that of others.

While viewing the world as complex, the methods and practice of communication are deeply human and do not succumb to authority, including that of the science itself, which is also a learning science.

An explanation for this standpoint appears useful.

Authority is vested in human agreement, not in law, religion, government, or any other exterior force.

This standpoint does not deny the utility of structures of governance. It just reasserts the values of life, survival and common humanity as prior to these structures, which must themselves learn to change at the speed of light and collectively connected imagination.

The problem here are the traditions and structures inherited from the past that do not want to change, despite urgent need to do so, at least observed from new perspectives of positive global digital opportunity on the one-hand, and growing material risks on the other.

It is only citizens who have the power to redesign these structures of collective governance at the speed required to address the complex risks we all increasingly face.

Meanwhile, if citizens at multiple scales of governance enter into self-governance, yet are unable to agree, methodologically they persist in order to decide.

Today, citizen decisions are aided by new programmes of scientific communication, data, information, classification and mapping.

And the open values of human communication dedicated to the values of life, protected by the scientific standpoint, at least when freed from its traditional role supporting outdated structures of power and privilege.

Governance in the digital age is for everyone, with everyone being paid to enjoy their human right to protect themselves, through the combined acts of self-learning and self-governance (see blog, Self-Governance and Self-Learning).

Self-governance was the promise of democracy, if never applied since Ancient Athens.

This incorporation of citizenship into the information age, also connects new economy principles of massive information abundance with citizenship

Consider, the purely financial value of the social networks as a model of value creation, although currently excluding citizenship, or any parity of value creation, between the data citizen and these data corporations. 

Information abundance (see blog ‘Information Abundance’) even outdates consumption economics, once everyone is connected through citizenship, to the creation, evaluation and distribution of data.

We are each entitled to life and to the values of living in return for our information, data, self-governance via self-management, at all scales of global civilization.

Yes, there are indeed limits on the life support systems of Planet Earth, while new information processing capabilities can be linked to citizenship and global governance to oversee these essential resources: or risk total distortion of necessary information and misappropriation of vital resources by those groups determined via greed and aggression.

Earth’s life support systems are currently closing down, being annihilated by an old order of reason – non-reason – and power – violence – that only a science of life can unpick and diminish, fast.

No longer can world resource management be driven simply by the private acquisition and maintenance of control by small elites.

Whether billionaire or politician, the entire Earth’s information and life-support systems may not be corrupted by the few.

Instead, these must move towards a scientifically validated system of citizen-centric self-governance, enhanced by interconnected digital networks.

Disagreement is a major reductive force for all human communication, and this is where the fate of humanity now resides.

If corruption can be protected via deliberate disagreement, this domain of miscommunication can be used by the corrupt to persist: until the end of time, literally for many of us.

While the values of a science and of common survival, are the only effective means of addressing disagreement, misinformation and the corruption of data (see blog, Miscommunication Ethics).

Each citizen is entitled to their human right of communication – even while often denied by present authorities – while a new science is capable of connecting individual reason – so called – with collective sensemaking.

The larger step is to upload the communication, information and data (CID) created by local communities, using scientifically grounded collective sensemaking and new information economic models, to the digital and network domain. 

This establishes collective intelligence, decision making and human rights protection at the very heart of our connected world and at all points of the network.

Distributed intelligence is thus both quality controlled and made available through multiple layers of a new digital model of global governance, aiding Planetary navigation through an always complex Universe, in the best interests of all life on Earth.