The first time I was in Polska, I started making a little ‘zine that I’d mail out to friends and family. I called it “Entropy.”

I remember that yesterday evening and wondered who had “entropy.com.” I knew it wouldn’t be available, and I typed “entropy.com” in the address bar.It re-directed me to “entropy.ie”.

“Entropy — Secure Networking.”

I’m not sure how much faith I’d put into a networking security company that’s taken its name from a principle of decay.

What would its logo be? A frayed networking cable?

Anticipating user confusion, the company included this explanation:

Conall Lavery founder of Entropy decided upon the name after reading a book called “The Crying of Lot 49” by the American author Thomas Pynchon.

In the book the professor uses the two theories of Entropy (thermodynamics and communications) and invents a perpetual motion machine that is driven by telepathy.

There are various definitions of Entropy.

According to the Collins dictionary, Entropy means “a thermodynamic quantity that changes in a reversible process by an amount equal to the heat absorbed or emitted divided by the thermodynamic temperature.”

In my view, that doesn’t help clarify things that much.