Skip to main content

Self-replicating code-creatures abound!

The amount of data being created every second is breathtaking (five trillion bits per second, as George Dyson tells us at ege.org).
Some take this as proof for a tremendous increase in knowledge, others spot only chatter and pocket litter - (and yes, there are estimates that half of the storage capacity - and hence half of the power consumed for 'the internet' - is used for porn).
Some see much more. Already in 1955, when the Norwegian-Italian mathematical biologist Nils Aaall Barricelli had heard about the machines operating on digital code in Princeton and finally managed to go there, he experimented with self-replication and cross-breeding of random strings on that machine. Being an experimentalist he observed carefully and studied patterns that reminded him of biological systems. Couldn't computer-code be treated similarly? Shouldn't there be the possibility of evolution in code?
Roger Dyson highlights the fact of universal operating systems across multiple hardware-platforms facilitating the occurence of multi-cellular operating systems that would be able to cross-breed, mutate, develop ... in the background.
While there is only speculation about the possibility that this could, might or would occur in an uncontrolled way there definitely is the option if not the clear reality of human-initiated 'meta-zoan' activity on the net. Probably most visible in the stealth-features of self-adapting malware.
But couldn't there be some damp, sparsely lit corners of the web where hitherto unidentified code-creatures linger and replicate - just like the amazing worms that curl up under those socks that you lost behind the washing-machine - years ago?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Academics should be blogging? No.

"blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now" The London School of Economics and Political Science states in one of their, yes, Blogs . It is wrong. The arguments just seem so right: "faster communication of scientific results", "rapid interaction with colleagues" "responsibility to give back results to the public". All nice, all cuddly and warm, all good. But wrong. It might be true for scientoid babble. But this is not how science works.  Scientists usually follow scientific methods to obtain results. They devise, for example, experiments to measure a quantity while keeping the boundary-conditions in a defined range. They do discuss their aims, problems, techniques, preliminary results with colleagues - they talk about deviations and errors, successes and failures. But they don't do that wikipedia-style by asking anybody for an opinion . Scientific discussion needs a set
8 comments
Read more

How Does Knowledge Get Into Society? A fly-by-artist-in-residence and a Dialogue

The artist Sadie Weis was shadowing some of the scientists at Paul-Drude-Institut (a research-institute for nanomaterials) for eight weeks, observing the way they work, how scientists communicate with eachother, how they explain stuff to an outsider. The result of this dialogue is a light-installation and - maybe more important for the scientists involved - a reflection of the scientists  and of the artist on the languages they use.  T his project of an artist in a fly-by-residency will be wrapped up on Saturday, November 10th with a p resentation by the artist Sadie Weis and a panel discussion on differences and similarities in the way artists and scientists communicate with the outside world                  November 10, 2018 from 14-18                 Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik                  Hausvogteiplatz 5–7, Berlin-Mitte                Germany For  the Dialogue,  please register at   exhibition@pdi-berlin.de .   Der Dialog wird auf Deutsc
Post a Comment
Read more

Driven by rotten Dinosaurs

My son is 15 years old. He asked me what a FAX-machine was. He get's the strange concept of CDs because there is a rack full with them next to the bookshelf, which contains tons of paper bound together in colorful bundles, called 'books'. He still accepts that some screens don't react to you punching your fingers on them. He repeatedly asks why my 'car' (he speaks the quotation marks) is powered by 'rotten dinosaurs'. At the same time he writes an email to Elon Musks Neuralink asking for an apprenticeship and sets up discord-servers for don't-ask-me-what. And slowly I am learning that it is a very good thing to be detached from historic technology, as you don't try to preserve an outdated concept while aiming to innovate. The optimized light-bulb would be an a wee bit more efficient, tiny light-bulb. But not a LED. An optimized FAX would probably handle paper differently - it would not be a file-transfer-system. Hyper-modern CDs might have tenf
Post a Comment
Read more