And it reminds me, too, of the joke about the scientists who tell God they can now create life, and God tells them to get their own dirt ... kind of saying the processing system is built into the background state to which information streams for processing. I sometimes use the analogy of radio waves carrying information but needing a radio receiver to process the encoded information so that it can then be further processed by a 'listener'.
Electromagnetic waves are an elegant carrier, but receivers and 'decoders' are required to realize the created/intended encoded messages.
(And I do love the 'dirt' joke!)