[_carl_jung]

This raises what I view to be a falsification by counter-example of the original premise. If information (and not _the representation of_ information) has mass, then does a piece of uncompressed information weight the same amount as the compressed information?

Furthermore, information is related to interpretation. A string of bits may be an uncompressed text file, a set of numbers, a compressed image, etc. But it's always the same amount of bits. How can my interpretation of that set of bits affect its mass?

[krastanov]

There are measures that do not depend on interpretation. Entropy of the content for instance. This is what people usually refer to in this context and the ideas of the article have actually been known to physicists for decades.

[_carl_jung]

I'm out of my depth here as I've never studied information theory. I suppose there's a larger gap between the theory and the practical aspect of the title of this article than I first imagined!

[krastanov]

Yeah, our everyday technology is maaaany orders of magnitude away from where this would be detectable. However, it is still important topic if we want to design extreme efficiency computing hardware (and already studied among researchers that want to make nanotech).

[kijin]

If the mass of information is strictly proportional to how many bits of entropy it contains, it follows that neither interpretation nor (lossless) compression can alter its mass.

There's quite a bit of difference between how we usually think about information and how information theory treats it. There it's all about entropy.

[_carl_jung]

Doesn't the very definition of "lossless" depend on interpretation? If lossy compression alters its mass, but lossless doesn't, doesn't it depend on the interpretation of "lost" information?

As I said to the above poster I don't know much about this, so hope this isn't an off-base question.

[kijin]

Lossless compression preserves entropy. Lossy doesn't.

The meaning of a certain sequence of bits depends on interpretation, of course. But nobody is talking about meaning here, only entropy. For our purpose it wouldn't matter if there were no sentient beings in the universe to attribute any meaning to anything.