There is a growing sense among physicists that all physical processes can be thought of in terms of the information they store and process; by some accounts information is the basic unit of existence in our cosmos. That kind of thinking has extraordinary implications: it means that reality is a kind of computation in which the basic processes at work simply chomp their way through a vast bedrock of information. And yet this is at odds with another of the great challenges facing modern science: understanding the nature of randomness. more »