"All physical systems can be thought of as registering and processing information, and how one wishes to define computation will determine your view of what computation consists of."
"Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions."
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Source: Nature 430, 971, August 26, 2004.
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"I have not proved that the universe is, in fact, a digital computer and that it's capable of performing universal computation, but it's plausible that it is."
"One of the things that I've been doing recently in my scientific research is to ask this question: Is the universe actually capable of performing things like digital computations?"
"Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs."
"Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and the second law of thermodynamics."
"Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there."