Matteo Pasquinelli © 2011 1 Introducing Four Regimes of Entropy: Notes for a Biomorphic Media Theory Matteo Pasquinelli 27 April 2011 Humboldt University Berlin Institut für Medienwissenschaft It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of 'equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic. —Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? 1944 Introduction . My contribution moves from underlining some uses and misuses of the notion of entropy across the history of science—especially in biology, ecology, psychoanalysis, cybernetics, economics and today’s media theory. My proposal is about starting to distinguish different densities of energy and regimes of entropy, namely: mineral, biological, mechanical, informational. According to this modest ‘geology’ of energetic regimes, we will be able to understand better the circulation of the notions of energy and entropy across different disciplines—and to recover a role for its twin concept: the notion of negative entropy introduced by Erwin Schrödinger. In general, this text intends to focus again the forms of positive energy accumulation instead of just dissipation of energy. Moreover, this outline can be useful to understand the shift from the age of industrial machines to the age of digital machines.