Information

Could the universe simply be an aggregated system of information, both processing and processed in simultaneous fluctuations? It seems to me plausible, in light of the findings in disciplines such as mathematics, physics, genetics, among many others. Is it possible that all of reality can be reduced to information? If so, is information something a priori--before human perception... in the noumenal realm as Kant would call it, or is information merely a construction manifested by conscious perception itself? It doesn't seem to me very likely that, even though we have a word, and a concept for information, that information is merely a conscious contrivance. In fact, "mere" consciousness is a faulty reduction, for if indeed the universe is information, then it necessarily follows that consciousness itself is composed of information. Potentially fallacious, I suppose, is this determination, for it doesn't always follow that the because a part of the whole is composed of some property, that also the whole is composed of the same. However, the "universe" is an absolute of sorts -- and the Absolute, whether one conceives of it as God, or otherwise, must at least contain aspects of the varieties of substances contingent in its parts. Another way to say it is, even though the universe may not be only what we can conceive of as information, the reason we can even conceive of the universe is through the medium of information. Language is code. Code can be broken into simple bits. The simplest bits of any entity seems to me to be the building blocks that we call information. So at least what we perceive can be reduced to information. The question becomes then, and this is the million dollar inquiry, if we experience the universe through the medium of information, and everything in our consciousness can be reduced to information, does it follow that the universe is comprised of information at the most fundamental level? And if so, are we then potentially able to tap in to the very nature of reality, with our technologies -- or even just simply our consciousness--with enough effort--?