Flow of Information

An earlier post cites a scholarly article by A.L. Frothingham on the history of the caduceus. Frothingham speculates that Hermes possibly originated as a god of fertilization. He's the spirit of the union between the earth and the sun which makes the germination of crops possible. From this kernel, the god's role expands to include every aspect of intercession: boundaries, commerce, pleading on behalf of men to the gods, delivering messages to men from the gods, and so on.

GNU Radio QPSK Constellation Plot

Hermes is an instance of what I sometimes think of as "the third thing", that which arises from two or more things. Information is maybe the best example of a third thing. In RF telecommunications, for example, information is conveyed by symbols that are encoded, transmitted and decoded by modems.

Information is present in natural situations, too. A shadow cast by a tree creates a region of light and dark. The rotation of the earth creates night and day. The orbit of the moon causes it to appear to go through phases of illumination. A drop of honey in a glass of water causes a gradient of sugar concentration, and so on.

If men can build a modem that sends and receives binary information in constrained, contrived conditions, maybe it's possible to build a device that taps into the flow of information of nature.