IN THE summer of 1942, the second world war was raging in the Pacific, with no sign of progress for the Allies. A single feature of one radio transmission was to change that. When the Japanese used the code “AF” in a message, referring to Midway Island, US cryptographers at Pearl Harbor identified it as the target of an impending Japanese attack. The subsequent US defeat of the Japanese fleet turned the tide – and showed how information can literally “in form” or “give form to” the larger flow of events.
In Decoding the Universe, Charles Seife builds on this…
