  Under the analysis of von Neumann, Brillouin and Gabor, a more general conception developed of information processing having a fundamental entropic cost. The possession of information could indeed be regarded as reducing entropy and therefore capable of producing thermodynamic work. However, as the acquisition of information, through measurement, was still believed to require a dissipation of heat, there was no threat to a generalised form of the second law. No explicit consideration needed to be made regarding exactly what kind of being the possessor of information had to be.