During the 1950s and 1960s, genetics and cell and molecular biology have been swamped by terms borrowed from information theory. This ‘information talk’ still pervades these fields, including widely used terms such as ‘genetic code’, ‘messenger RNA’, ‘transcription’, ‘translation’, ‘transduction’, ‘genetic information’, ‘chemical signals’, ‘cell signaling’ etc. But, as the concept of informatio...