It from these bits.
In the early 1950s, IEEE published an editorial that dismissed what it called the “cult” of information theory: the impulse to take Shannon’s framework and apply it everywhere, from poetry to prayer. I loved it, not because I agreed, but because of how sharp the rebuke was. It accused such work of “overreach”, of intellectual imperialism, as if the equations of communication had no business mingling with the messier equations of life and the universe.
And yet, here we are. Living, breathing, thinking creatures stitched together by information. Photosynthesis is planetary-scale information exchange: photons translated into sugar, sunlight into survival. Black holes, once thought to obliterate information, may carry soft hair: subtle quantum imprints that allow traces of what fell in to persist. Meaning, it seems, resists annihilation.
The IEEE critique wasn’t wrong so much as it was small. It mistook discipline for destiny. That’s why I now take accusations of “overreach” as a challenge -- while staying humble, curious, and grounded.
The phrase has become a personal shorthand. I struggle with introductions: Who are you? What are your interests? I can out-awkward anyone playing that game. How do you say everything without sounding pretentious and totally insufferable. So I borrow the clause instead. My “cult of information theory” is shorthand for my interests: I'm interested in everything. Enabling people and extending human intelligence [information sciences], restoring our connection with the natural world [photosynthesis], and fostering communities [religion] that stave off the disease of loneliness Kurt Vonnegut warned us about.