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Ask HN: Is Software Energy or Matter?
4 points by Dacod 2224 days ago
2 comments

Software is information. Information is created with energy, in a process that could involve matter, but it is fundamentally neither.
And information (and software) could use matter or energy as medium for storage and transfer; e.g storing that python function as carbon traces on a piece of paper or transmitting it with photons through the fiber optic line.

For the lack of a better word, information (and software) is culture while matter and energy (carbon on paper, photons) are nature.

What information does not require matter?
An electromagnetic signal traveling through space.
Photons are matter, IMHO.
Photons lack mass. They don't meet the definition of matter.
Software/knowledge/information is interpretation of either energy or matter. David Chalmers describes it well.