Terry Pratchett - The Science of Discworld II - The Globe

And that's it? said Ridcully. 'We can't do anything?'

'We don't have any magic, sir,' said Ponder.

'But we do know everythin' is goin' to turn out all right, though, don't we?' said Ridcully. 'We know that people get off the planet before the next big wallop, right? We saw the evidence.

Right?'

Ponder sighed.

'Yes, sir. But it might not happen. It's like the Shell Midden people.'

'They didn t happen?'

'Not ... here, sir,' said Ponder.

'Ah. And you're goin' to say "it's because of quantum" at some point?' 'I hadn't intended to, sir, but you're on the right lines.'

'So ... when we left them, did they pop out of existence?'

'No, sir. We did.'

'Oh. Well, so long as someone did ...' said Ridcully. Any thoughts, gentlemen?'

'We could go to the pub again?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, hopefully.

'No,' said Ridcully. 'This is serious.'

'So am I.'

'I don't see what we can do,' said the Dean. 'The humans here needed the elves to tinker with their heads. When we stopped that, we got the Shell Midden people. When we didn't stop it, we got people like Dee, head half full of rubbish.'

'I know someone who'd be right at home with this problem,' said Ridcully, thoughtfully. 'Mister Stibbons, we would be able to get back home now, wouldn't we? Just to send a semaphore message?'

'Yes, sir, but there's no need for that. Hex can do that directly,' said Ponder, before he could stop himself.

'How?' said Ridcully.

'I ... er ... connected him up to the semaphore just after you left, sir. Er ... it was just a matter of pulleys and things. Er ... I installed a little set of repeater arms on the roof of the High Energy Magic Building. Er ... and employed a gargoyle to do the watching, and we needed one anyway, because the pigeons up there have really got too numerous ... er ...'

'So Hex can send and receive messages?' said Ridcully.

'Yes, sir. All the time. Er ...'

'But that costs a fortune! Is it coming out of your budget, man?'

'Er, no, sir, because it's actually quite cheap, er ... it's free, actually ..." Ponder went for broke.

'Hex worked out the codes, you see. The gargoyles up on the big tower don't bother about where the signals are coming from, they just notice the codes, so, er, Hex started by adding the codes for the Assassins' Guild or the Fools' Guilds to the messages and, er, they probably didn't notice the extra amount on their bills because they're using the clacks all the time these days—'

'So ... we're stealing? said Ridcully.

'Well, er, yes, sir, in a way, but it's hard to know exactly what. Last month Hex worked out the semaphore company's own codes so his messages travel as part of their internal signalling, sir.

No one gets billed for that.'

'This is very disturbing news, Stibbons,' said Ridcully sternly.

'Yes, sir,' said Ponder, looking at his feet.

'I feel I must ask you a rather difficult and worrying question: is it likely that anyone will find out?'

'Oh, no, sir. It's impossible to trace.'

'Impossible?'

'Yes, sir. Every week Hex sends a message to company headquarters readjusting the total of messages sent, sir. Anyway, there's so many I don't think anyone checks.'

'Oh? Well, that's all right then,' said Ridcully. 'It never really happens, and no one can find out it's us in any case. Can we send all our messages that way?'

"Well, technically yes, sir, but I think that might be abusing the—'

'We are academics, Stibbons,' said the Dean. 'And information should be allowed to flow freely.'

'Exactly,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'An untrammelled flow of information is essential to a progressive society. This is the age of the semaphore, after all.'

'Obviously it flows to us,' said Ridcully.

'Oh, certainly,' said the Dean. 'We don't want it flowing away from us. We're talking about flow here, not spread.'

'You wanted a message sent?' said Ponder, before the wizards got too deeply into this.

'And we really don't have to pay?' said Ridcully.

Ponder sighed. 'No, sir.'

'Jolly good,' said the Archchancellor. 'Have this one sent to the kingdom of Lancre, will you?

They've only got one clacks tower. Got your notebook? Message begins:

"To Mistress Esmerelda Weatherwax. How are you? I am fine. An interesting problem has arisen ..."

A semaphore is a simple and time-honoured example of a digital communication system. It encodes letters of the alphabet using the positions of flags, lights, or something similar. In 1795

George Murray invented a version that is close to the system currently used in Discworld: a set of six shutters that could be opened or closed, thus giving 64 different 'codes', more than enough for the entire alphabet, numbers 0 to 10 and some 'special' codes. The system was further developed but ceased to be cutting-edge technology when the electric telegraph heralded the wired age. The Discworld semaphore (or 'clacks') has been taken much further, with mighty trunk route towers carrying bank after bank of shutters, aided by lamps after dark, and streaming messages bi-directionally across the continent. It is a pretty accurate 'evolution' of the technology: if we too had failed to harness steam and electricity, we might well be using something like it ...

There is enough capacity on that system even to handle pictures -seriously. Convert the picture to a 64 x 64 grid of little squares that can be black, white or four shades of grey, and then read the grid from left to right and top to bottom like a book. It's just a matter of information, a few clever clerks to work out some compression algorithms, and a man with a shallow box holding

4,096 wooden blocks, their six sides being, yes, black, white and four shades of grey. It'll take them a while to reassemble the pictures, but clerks are cheap.

Digital messages are the backbone of the Information Age, which is the name we currently give to the one we're living in, in the belief that we know a lot more than anyone else, ever. Discworld is comparably proud of being in the Semaphore Age, the Age of the Clacks. But what, exactly, is information?

When you send a message, you are normally expected to pay for it -because if you don't, then whoever is doing the work of transmitting that message for you will object. It is this feature of messages that has got Ridcully worried, since he is wedded to the idea that academics travel free.

Cost is one way to measure things, but it depends on complicated market forces. What, for example, if there's a sale on? The scientific-concept of 'information' is a measure of how much message you're sending. In human affairs, it seems to be a fairly universal principle that for any given medium, longer messages cost more than short ones. At the back of the human mind, then, lurks a deep-seated belief that messages can be quantified: they have a size. The size of a message tells you 'how much information' it contains.

Is 'information' the same as 'story'? No. A story does convey information, but that's probably the least interesting thing about stories. Most information doesn't constitute a story. Think of a telephone directory: lots of information, strong cast, but a bit weak on narrative. What counts in a story is its meaning. And that's a very different concept from information.

We are proud that we live in the Information Age. We do, and that's the trouble. If we ever get to the Meaning Age, we'll finally understand where we went wrong.

Information is not a thing, but a concept. However, the human tendency to reify concepts into things has led many scientists to treat information as if it is genuinely real. And some physicists are starting to wonder whether the universe, too, might be made from information.