Many evolutionary and self-organisation pressures can be characterised information-theoretically not only because it's an approximation useful in designing biologically-inspired systems, but also because numerous optimal structures evolve/self-organise in nature when information transfer within certain channels is maximised - i.e., evolution operates at a certain error threshold. In other words, constraints, e.g. noise, reduce the channel's bandwidth, and the system evolves to preserve information by self-improving, re-structuring, and so on (here information is understood in Shannon sense - as a reduction in uncertainty).
Information as "lingua franca"
The weak IDSO view is that it is easier to compare different engineering designs by analysing information dynamics. For instance, imagine a completely centralised modular robot, controlled from a single module/segment that regularly receives data from other segments, computes the best actions for every segment, and sends the instructions back. How would one systematically compare this design with other, more modular, designs? Measuring instructions' size, number of packets, memory usage, etc. would be prone to ambiguities. On the other hand, carrying out the analysis information-theoretically has the advantage of employing "the lingua franca" for multiple approaches.
The strong IDSO view maintains that if such "lingua franca" is possible then it is likely that the evolution/self-organisation (and eventually human designers) discover it, and put to use. According to this view, maximization of information transfer through certain channels is one of the main evolutionary pressures.
Examples
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