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BEHAVIOR CHANGING WORDS. “In C. elegans, a family of small-molecule pheromones called ascarosides regulates gender-specific attraction, repulsion, aggregation, olfactory plasticity, and entry into dauer (a stress-resistant life stage), collectively demonstrating that ascarosides mediate a wide range of C. elegans behaviors.” https://lnkd.in/d6G6mZ9 View in LinkedIn

INTERACTIVE ELEMENTS. "Imagine a variety of components: hardware and software modules, files, websites, interfaces, users... All these components interact by exchanging information. Assume that neighboring components have the capability to mutually adapt: by sending messages back and forth they negotiate until they achieve a common "understanding", in which they both can settle. But coordination does not stop there: it propagates back and forth between all components, until a globally stable order is created." https://lnkd.in/dkkAEiE View in LinkedIn

CONSERVED DIALECT. “Ascaroside Signaling Is Widely Conserved among Nematodes. A group of small molecules called ascarosides has been found to mediate mate finding, aggregation, and developmental diapause in Caenorhabditis elegans, but it is unknown whether ascaroside signaling exists outside of the genus Caenorhabditis.” https://lnkd.in/d6G6mZ9 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this two weekend fragment from nature on modular language by a type of worm that appears to have syntax rules and significant complexity. It seems that whenever we assume that a creature is simple, time reverses that conclusion, proving perhaps it is us who are simple. We only invented the printing press (in the west) in the fourteenth century; these creatures have been printing words for millennia. View in LinkedIn

THE WORDS. “The term ascaroside was first created to describe a novel lipid detected in the intestinal parasite Ascaris lumbricoides over 100 years ago. These lipophilic molecules, containing long aliphatic side chains, formed a layer around Ascaris eggs to protect against harsh environmental conditions. More recently, a larger collection of more hydrophilic ascarosides has been identified in C. elegans and other related nematodes and has been shown to regulate a multitude of behaviors and aspects of the life history of the worm including development, mate attraction, aggregation, and repulsion.” https://lnkd.in/dGAHbZv View in LinkedIn

TIERRA EVOLUTION. "Informational parasites are mutations that steal CPU from the host programs; and, the hosts can also steal CPU from the parasite. Hyper-parasites are hosts that have stolen information from the parasites. Next was cooperation, then cheating. Complexity was born." https://lnkd.in/d_8VqjV View in LinkedIn

TIERRA. "Code individuals reproduced like bacteria with genomes copied mother to daughter, quickly doubling in number, and with mutations, quickly evolving; due to the action of death, the genetic composition of the community changes over time." https://lnkd.in/d_8VqjV View in LinkedIn

TIERRA was "another world that I could inoculate with life, not the same world that we live in, it's not the world of the chemistry of carbon and hydrogen, it's a different universe, the chemistry of bits and bytes." The CPU was the source of energy like the sun in the real world, and the creatures lived in the memory chips. https://lnkd.in/d_8VqjV View in LinkedIn

CREATIVE SOLUTION. "Ray reduced the number of letters in the computing language to 32, comparable to the 20 of the genetic language. Mutations in numbered code shuffled the numbers and the bits that fit together could not find each other. So Ray changed number locations in code for shapes, so after mutation, they could still find each other, just like in cells, or the principle of matching metaphorical shapes in 1s and 0s, the language of the binary alphabet." https://lnkd.in/d_8VqjV View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL LIFE. "Tom Ray's story about the program Project Tierra generating random mutations in code and beyond. Why can you mutate genetic code and not computer code? The genetic language consists of an alphabet of 20 letters, whereas the computer language has billions of letters in its alphabet. So you can rearrange 20 letters and get a meaningful word, but it is harder to do that with billions of letters." https://lnkd.in/d_8VqjV View in LinkedIn