arabolas revealed by the contrast between larger white grains and smaller black ones. At the bottom we see the very last incursion of the tidal flow, depositing large artifacts at its leading edge, exhausting its energy and falling back to leave a smooth deposition of fine black sand in its retreat. The sand itself has created a gray-scale image of the flows that created it. Channel recapitulates flow, the basis of all information storage systems.
Classical life, biology, humans and technical life forms, depend on channel dominance for survival. For humans, the channel constraints are obvious - too hot, we die. Too cold, we die. Our biological channels are only capable of managing a narrow range of variation. This is true for the millions of channels which operate within biological life forms, all of them modulated and controlled by subtle and delicate information flows and channels.
However, in order for classical life forms to evolve, they need to be subjected to flows beyond their capability to control. How much beyond is a matter of the physical, behavioral and cognitive makeup of the organism. Too much and they all die. Not enough and no evolution takes place.
Further, in order for classical life forms to store information for later use, a flow must be created which “precipitates out” its flow energy as a deliberately configured physical image at theboundary of flow and channel dominance. The energy of the flow is frozen in the matter of the channel.
Think of an old audio record player. The recording was made by creating a flow (turning a blank disk under a modulated cutting head), which cut the disk so as to increase access to the energetic flows imposed upon the cutting head. In playback, the stylus was jiggled about to recreate the energy profile of the original recording flow. Channel recapitulates flow.
The boundaries on this process are the flow energy necessary to make a “permanent” change in the storage medium - not too little, not too much. The storage medium “morphs” based on
the flow imposed on it. To recover information, a flow is morphed by the evolved channel. In photography, silver halide crystals are “triggered” by incoming photons in a cascade reaction. Larger grains have more area and thus are more likely to be triggered than small ones. By controlling the number of photons (aperture) and the exposure time, and controlling grain size, a gray scale is produced. This is exactly analogous to the refinery function described above. We have captured and frozen an energetic and organized flow of photons.
To put it in constructal terms, an ordered flow of photons reflected from a subject strikes the film, a channel barrier, and morphs the chemical structure of the channel. In the process, the entire flow is apparently dissipated - the channel dominates, but is altered by the flow. After developing and reversing the image in printing, an unstructured flow of photons is dominated by the frozen flow channel and an “image” of the original flow is recreated. Is this an example of a constructal flow increasing access for its flows - in the future?
At extreme magnification we can see the individual grains of silver nitrate that make up the “developed” image. A very small jump indeed from the constructal flows making patterns on the beach.
The Constructal Law does not preclude the interruption or modulation of flows, nor speak to their physical manifestation, whether kinetic, electromagnetic or photonic. Using the ability of flow dominance (morphing) to induce permanent changes in its channels, and the ability of channels in turn to modulate flows, we have the physical basis for understanding the operation of all information systems within the Constructal Law.
Dominance is much in evidence in the neural networks of the brain as the balance between promotion and suppression of impulses. Many pathways, morphing constantly. Our ability to receive information from patterns of frozen flows is one of the essential characteristics of all life forms. How some flows “learned” how to create, preserve and replicate frozen fl