Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.

All physical systems can be thought of as registering and processing information, and how one wishes to define computation will determine your view of what computation consists of.

Indeed, as the above calculation indicates, to take full advantage of the memory space available, the ultimate laptop must turn all its matter into energy.

When you zap things with light to build quantum computers, you're hacking existing systems. You're hijacking the computation that's already happening in the universe, just like a hacker takes over someone else's computer.

Some folks think life and technology and mind can keep expanding forever. Others say it can't. We are still not clear on that.

Meaning is like pornography, you know it when you see it.

The primary consequence of the computational nature of the universe is that the universe naturally generates complex systems, such as life. Although the basic laws of physics are comparatively simple in form, they give rise, because they are computationally universal, to systems of enormous complexity.