Information Is Not a Substance: From Maxwell's Demon to an Energy Interpretation of Information Thermodynamics

This paper proposes that information is the perceivable difference in energy distribution under given scales and constraints—the texture of energy—within Energy-Efficiency Theory (EET). By embedding Maxwell's demon into the Energy-Efficiency Cycle (EEC), it shows that measurement time constraints, memory maintenance costs, and erasure irreversibility follow from EET's axioms. It unifies physical, functional, and semantic information as hierarchical energy constraints, engages with mainstream positions (Wheeler, Floridi, pancomputationalism), and proposes quantifiable testable paths.