Entropy and Communication

[Basileios Drolias]

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                    We Await Silent Tristero's Empire
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On Wed, 12 Oct 1994 LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu wrote:

> 
> For example, in the short story, Callisto tries to protect himself from
> the inevitable physical entropy of the universe in his private hothouse of
> an apartment while Meatball Mulligan holds his leasebreaking part downstairs
> which continually threatens to degenerate into an entropic anarchy of its
> own.  Mulligan functions as a kind of Maxwell's Demon to restore order, but
> the noise of the party invades Callisto's sanctuary.  Ironically, the noise
> which should have the effect of breaking the lease only breaks the sanctity
> of Callisto's retreat.
> 
> Thus, if communications entropy is a measure of disorder in a signal and
> therefore a lack of communication, nothing has been communicated (by
> intent anyway).  
> 
> In both works, TRP also plays with the pardoxical nature of entropy:
> in physics, too much organization leads to stasis, but so does too little.
> In communications, too little redundancy can lead to a loss of information,
> but so can too great a degree of redundancy.
> 


I haven't read 'entropy' and I cannot contribute much here, but as a
proffesional physisist I can reccomend on these matters Murray Gell-Mann's
new book "The quark and the jaguar". The chapters that develop the
relations between complexity, entropy, and information (along with the
solution of teh Maxwell's demon paradox) are quite interesting and they
may be quite helpful in order to see more clearly Pynchon's intentions. 
 Maybe Shannon's original paper on entropy (1940ies?) which Pynchon
probably had read could also be helpful. 

basil.