...of radio-waves

The negative of entropy I suppose, Second Law and all that, I do remember the litcrits grabbing at that because of something someone had said half a century before about their ignorance. That and the Principle of Uncertainty, hardly a writer who didn't have to show he'd heard of them and drag them in at the drop of a thinking cap. John used to say they misapplied the concepts right and left. And just as entropy is always increasing, so negentropy is for ever decreasing, he said, Jip I mean. In the universe at large as well as in local systems. What a depressing thought. Perhaps that's why - no I'm getting confused. How can negentropy, if it means information, be for ever decreasing when all the media are for ever raising information to the nth power?
Well, yes, I did ask him that, and he said that's just the point. Information in the scientific sense. I only ask for information I said. I wish I understood. I ought to, working sometimes in radio-plays, but do actors in front of a mike, or even radio-producers, have to understand radio-waves any more than editors and publishers or even writers have to understand the neurological process of writing? And it is neurological, I can almost feel the thoughts going down through my arm and fingers and pen onto the paper, it's a strain because I'm not used to it but it's a marvellous feeling. Can't think why writers all sit at a keyboard and screen these days, and call themselves wordprocessors. Where was I? Oh yes, both writing and broadcasting are a silent process, because radio-waves make no sound, Jip said, they can even travel in vacuo, the signal's detected as sound only when it activates a receiver. That much I understood. Just like thought in fact, detected only when it hits a vocal cord or a stone, a parchment, a piece of paper, a screen. Stone to screen. That clangs a brainwave-length somewhere. Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels. All scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls. Maybe Jip and Zab are onto something.

[Verbivore, Brooke-Rose, C.]