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Description of  The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm

Your information has a life of its own, and its using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, weve failed to ask exactly why were expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we createall of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videosamounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And its an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isnt just something we produce its the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.