Smart Spacetime: How information challenges our ideas about space, time, and process - Paperback

by Mark Burgess (Author)

The err is human, to explain is [Mark Burgess]'
--Patrick Debois

One of the best reads and written by one of the best minds!'
--Glenn O'Donnell (about In Search of Certainty)

What if space is not like we learn in mathematics, but more like a network?
What happens to the ability to measure things as you shrink or expand?

Since Einstein, space and time were the province of theoretical physicists and science fiction writers, but today they are of equal importance in Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and even Biology. This book tells a new and radical story of space and time, rooted in fundamental physics but going beyond to underpin some of the biggest questions in science and technology.

This is a book about physics, it's about computers, artificial intelligence, and many other topics on surface. It's about everything that has to do with information. It draws on examples from every avenue of life, and pulls apart preconceptions that have been programmed into us from childhood. It re-examines ideas like distance, time, and speed, and asks if we really know what those things are. If they are really so fundamental and universal concepts then can we also see them and use them in computers, or in the growing of a plant? Conversely, can we see phenomena we know from computers in physics? We can learn a lot by comparing the way we describe physics with the way we describe computers---and that throws up a radical view: the concept ofvirtualization, and what it might mean for physics.

I think that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that [Mark Burgess] is the closest thing to Richard Feynman within our industry'
--Cameron Haight

...magnificent; a tour de force of connecting the dots of many disciplines... Mark's combination of originality, synthesis and practicality knows no equal.'
--Paul Borrill