  We argue in the following that the entropy-area law of black-hole physics and
the various holographic bounds are the consequences of the microscopic dynamics
of elementary degrees of freedom living on or near the Planck scale. We locate
them both in the interior and on the boundary of, for example, the black hole
with the strange area-behavior of various quantities being the result of a
long-range bulk-boundary dependence among these degrees of freedom. In contrast
to other approaches we regard the vacuum fluctuations on microscopic scales as
the relevant elementary building blocks. In so far certain relations to to old
ideas of Sakharov, Zeldovich et al are acknowledged (induced gravity). Most
importantly, we prove that the existence of a large energy gap between a few
low-lying excitation patterns and the majority of the other (in principle)
possible excitation patterns in a subvolume with given boundary excitation is
crucial for this area-dependence. We also remark that this is an indication
that some particular entangled space-time geometry of a somewhat non-local
character prevails in the microscopic (Planck) regime. Our findings are
corroborated by the explanation of a number of open questions in the field (see
the table of contents at the end of the introduction).
