But wait, you say, the universe is not a serial bitstream!

And you are probably right.  My model of the universe says the best we can do is  rearrange the bits within a short subsequence, and give ourselves the illusion that there is time and distance separability. Seems strange, the clock of the vacuum would have to be enormously fast relative to the periodic appearance of an electron in that model.  But the model is a sound beginning, take the model and add in the the folds and warps, so it is rational again. Perhaps consider the vacuum to be a series of hierarchical encoders.

But more importantly, to me, is the fact that in the economy it is not the vacuum that is making the serial bit stream, we are. And we do it deliberately. Consider the stock market, most traders make it appear to be a serial bit stream, and they submit serial bids, perfectly happy.  That is entirely possible because trades take place on a second by second basis, but oil discovery, factory deals and acquisitions take place on  a month by month basis, and quarterly data is deliberately quarterly.  Real events are much slower than the information events they become in the ticker. But we are the gods, in this situation, and we make the serial bit stream model on purpose, precisely because the model is so much simpler.

Here is another example. The WalMart executive wants to collect store sales from 1,000 stores. He can read and place the data for one store in 10 seconds. How often should he collect store data?  He should collect the data rarely enough so the volatility from collection time to collection time is sized to the mean value.  In other words, he collects the data every week so the chunks of data are large relative to the collection time. He is deliberately serializing the data.

How can we fix the serial bit stream model of the universe? Dunno, yet. I am not that smart.