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The pool of one thousand characters above consists of the lower case letters a-z, the numerals 0-9, and the space. The left and right arrows increment and decrement the "page" while the random button produces far more interesting results. The reset button brings you back to ensure that you're never lost completely in it. This pool contains all truth and fallacy, the story of how the universe came about, and an intricate account of how this very page was created. It contains the scores for every baseball game ever played, the lyrics to your favorite song, and the answer to the meaning of life. It contains your very thoughts; and every word there ever was, perfectly translated into English. It also contains the largest lot of gibberish ever placed on a webpage for perusing.
Consider how the infinite is wrapped up inside the finite as it's bound by our understanding of it. The medium of communication binds up all transferable knowledge, excluding the unutterable word, or those guttural emotions no scribe could ever pen. Consider the universe and all of its meanings. The happenstances, random chances, or the structure of it all. Look deeply, and reflect on the pool, then ask yourself where meaning lies. Would to merely know all the contents of the pool be enough?
As you stare into the vast abyss of all that ever could be, you form yourself in reflection of that which is. That is to say, you form your identity based on your perceptions of information and your reactions to that information. If, after sending a random ripple through the pool, there stood a sea of five hundred "42"s, you would be confronted with the decision of how you form your identity around that fact. Should you gain an affinity for "42"s which appeared on the page with the click of a button? Or would you adopt a fear of the number which mysteriously showed up in the dead of night when you read the page? Consider also how your preexisting identity forms your perceptions of the pool. Had you only known of numbers that never exceeded 9, you most certainly would have recognized the alternating 4 and 2, halving and then doubling the previous character. Do you find it interesting that both the pool and the observer ripple each other? Whether you decide that this pool is a load of rubbish or a tool for insight into the thoughts which exist inside of our universe, you have inevitably formed an opinion about this place by virtue of exposure, and found yet another part of yourself you didn't have before.
The random button on this page is centered on an engine whose purpose is to create the most nonsensical string of results possible. By design, its purpose is to create meaningless information streams. What if the page was designed to generate sensical streams of data, using a set of algorithms for a sophisticated AI, and could produce random information that was comprehendible? Would the information somehow contain more meaning if it were?
In this context, the word "meaning" needs fortification in regards to its definition. In order for information to have meaning to anyone, it necessitates a connection to the identity which processes it. That connection needs to contain a use for the processor, where the information is either certifiable, or evokes a response of certifiable experience. If the information does not attach to a tangible or abstract entity for the processor, then it possesses no meaning for the processor.
An author, then, is one who generates meaning for a processor; one who organizes symbols from the pool of possibilities into those which contain meaning. If the random button of this page is hit and meaning spills out, the author of that meaning is threefold. The page itself takes on the form of an entity because it generated the meaning based on its defining characteristics. I am an author because I defined the characteristics of the page, and chance is the author inasmuch as the built in random function for the javascript provided for a way to incorporate chance into the generation of this page.
The reader, or processor of information by this definition of meaning, is any device that infers meaning from a stream of information. Meaning works similar to gravity in this scenario because it either requires two bodies (a reader and an author) or it merely exists but can only be observed when two bodies exist. If meaning is created in a forest, but no one is around to understand it, does the meaning really exist? In closing, I'll present a few more questions that could use some mulling over. Is it possible to create meaning, or can it only be transferred from gathered information streams? Is meaning neither created nor destroyed? Does there exist meaning which has no author? Does the quality of the author reflect the quality of the meaning? What does this all mean?
This discussion was inspired by some works of the authors listed below. It was not my intention to present their opinions in this exercise, but rather to put forth ideas which resulted in the reflection of those ides set forth by the authors mentioned below. If you are interested in finding their opinion (for afterall, they are more highly regarded than myself in this field) you can explore the avenues below, or do some simple google searches for their names.
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