Information Processing 1st and 2nd Laws

Autonomous Maxwellian ratchets, often simply called information ratchets, thermodynamically interact with their surroundings while reading and modifying a data tape. This makes them an ideal toy model for (biological, social, engineered, ...) systems that dynamically sense and react to their changing environments. The tape itself acts as a thermodynamic reservoir: by changing its statistical properties, we can funnel energy out of the thermal environment, while still respecting a generalized 2nd Law.

Prior bounds required equilibrium steady states in the dynamics, which precludes application to many complex systems of interest. Addressing this required zooming out to a purely stochastic-dynamical picture where surprisal, not energy, plays the fundamental role. This ultimately lead to our results: First and Second Laws for information processing that generalize the interplay between enertegics and dynamics in actively-driven complex systems.