Landauer's principle internals - how it works I attached a picture, where the energy dissipation (entropy increase) on information erasure is explained. Is the explanation correct?


"RESTORE TO ONE" - is it correct to identify the operation as "information erasure"? It looks like a negation, not like "information erasure".
I would say that the erasurement would be performed, when the "ball" (the black dot near "0" in the picture) would be returned to the meta-stable point between 0 and 1.
Maybe the intention of the author was to show, that "negation" has "erasurement" embedded in it? Then, he states that "computing depends on information erasure" - this statement is too strong? - we have reversible computation that do not erase information, correct?
The picture and point 2. (above) seem to be a very good metaphore of Landauer's principle. Does it match Landauer's principle closely, or maybe even perfectly - or is it just a picture to help only conceptually understand the principle?


(PS. A better title is welcomed..)
You're confused because the example didn't cover all possible cases, and you're extrapolating improperly.

Negation is the operation


  0 &rarr; 1,
    1 &rarr; 0.


This is reversible, and can theoretically be performed using an arbitrarily small amount of energy.

Restore to one is the operation


  0 &rarr; 1,
    1 &rarr; 1.


This is not reversible, and unavoidably  dissipates $k T \ln 2\;$ energy.