2015
Constructor Theory of Information
A radical attempt to rebuild physics around what is possible and impossible, information included.
“Constructor theory is a new mode of explanation that specifies statements about physical systems in terms of whether tasks are possible or impossible.”
Possible vs impossible
Constructor theory describes the world in terms of tasks and whether physical laws allow them. Information becomes a mode of transmission defined by what can be copied, what cannot, and what must be conserved.
Beyond Shannon
Shannon separated meaning from transmission for engineering. Constructor theory asks which information transformations physics permits at all, including quantum and thermodynamic limits.
An ambitious program
The framework is still developing. Read it as a foundations paper: less about tooling, more about rewriting what "information" means in physics. Deutsch's wider constructor theory program starts here.
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The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work