Month: September 2022

VIRUSES AND PRIONS are good examples of biological conundrums where there is little consensus as to whether they are living creatures, or at best on a continuum. These are old debates. Now hold that thought while we ease into the subject of computer code, its evolution, self-replication, and viral forms. View in LinkedIn

GENETIC CODE, in all its weird and wonderfully diverse forms, has occupied these pages for a long while. As entities that are many millions of years in the evolutionary hopper, they are hugely informative to the topic of computer code, relatively new on Planet Earth. And as strings of information, they have a great deal in common, and even more not in common. View in LinkedIn

COMPUTER CODED INFORMATION can be compared to DNA, viruses, or prions. Most typically, the comparison is to DNA. However, it may be more interesting to compare it to viruses and prions, who live in the grey zone of living. View in LinkedIn

"HUMAN DNA has approximately 3 billion base pairs, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute. That means 4^3,000,000,000 possible base sequences. For simplicity, let’s say that each gene is either suppressed, or not, in the epigenome. That would be a binary choice for each gene. Most humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. Let’s say the average is about 2^22,500 more choices." https://lnkd.in/dtQfeKi View in LinkedIn

SIX GIGAS OF INFORMATION. "Human DNA genome encodes 4^(3 billion) = 2^(6 billion) choices, or 6 billion bits of information. The epigenome encodes at least 2^22,500 choices, or 22,500 bits. The total information is 6,000,022,500 bits, or approximately 6 Gb (gigabits)." https://lnkd.in/dtQfeKi View in LinkedIn

ONE BILLION SEQUENCES. "There are 21 possible results from each codon. The one “start” codon encodes one amino acid; 60 different codons encode another 19 amino acids; and three codons encode “stop”. The 3 billion base pairs would be grouped into 1 billion codons, and each codon has 21 possible meanings. So that would be 21^(1 billion) sequences of amino acids." https://lnkd.in/dtQfeKi View in LinkedIn

COMPUTER CODERS should all study molecular genetics before coding. Nature has been infinitely inventive, a mischievous and impartial innovator of the use, distribution, hierarchies, and ecological adaption of DNA code. Nature has pushed all the limits of this fundamental engine of evolution, to make it more diverse, more adaptable, the raw material for selective pressures. View in LinkedIn

START OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES. "In 1949, a few years after Von Neumann’s work, the language Short Code appeared (www.byte.com). It was the first computer language for electronic devices and it required the programmer to change its statements into 0’s and 1’s by hand. Still, it was the first step towards the complex languages of today." https://lnkd.in/dHAgA5r View in LinkedIn

COMPUTER CODE has been on this planet for just 66 Years, and in this time has transformed human culture. It is a product of human evolution, and will undoubtedly play perhaps a decisive role in crafting human evolution in the future. As wet biology and human culture merge, there is room for the extraordinary. View in LinkedIn

INFLUENCE TREES. "Valverde and Solé sampled 347 programming languages spanning a period starting from 1952 when the first piece of code was written, up until 2010...the simple idea of influence trees can be extended to many other artifacts of technological and cultural innovation, way beyond programming languages, which only serve as an example of a highly dynamic change in seemingly homogenous field of ideas." https://lnkd.in/dY89BaB View in LinkedIn