From the Britannica dictionary, the best explanation for entropy, is “the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system.”

Put simply, entropy is a measure of disorder or randomness in a system that affects all aspects of our daily lives. In fact, you can think of it as nature’s tax. Left unchecked disorder increases over time, energy disperses, and systems dissolve into chaos. The more disordered something is, the more entropic we consider it.  Entropy as seen in everyday life manifests as aging in living organisms, rusting of certain metals, ripening of fruit and eventually the decaying of organic matter.

Related to digital content, if left unmaintained, systems slow down or fail, and become targets for attack by malware threats and viruses.