First, I like this APOD because it makes me reflect on our technological identity:On one hand, we've created, over a very short time, machines capable of reading, extracting, and organizing the tons of information we put out. The Wikipedia page on bar codes is fascinating and worth a read.
On the other hand, this is raw data that is uninteresting and unreadable to us, while the knowledge we as humans work with and sometimes crave is as yet difficult for machines to get a handle on: faces, emotions, ideas, etc.
Overall, this image inspires in me the "we've come far, but there's so much further to go"
sentiment so common in the field of astronomy.
Second, a question:Is it possible for an image like this to violate the Holographic Principle, if the information contained in its surface area, "http://apod.nasa.gov/," is a link to a whole world of information?
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Sam
