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BLADE RUNNER 2049 predicted that a society which kept every record electronically could easily be wiped clean by cosmic accident such as sun flares or by malicious intent; bank records, IDs, property deeds, the lot. View in LinkedIn

ADAPTATION TO DRY LAND. “Angiosperm fossil records dating back to the Lower Cretaceous (130–140 million years ago) show, in addition to the generation of seeds, the second major functional innovation of the spermatophytes: the evolution of pollen grains which harbor, and thus protect, sperm cells (the male gametes) from drying out.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674205214608996 View in LinkedIn

ULTIMATE VULNERABILITY. “Someday the Net will be the summation of the world's total computing resources. All computers will link up into a chaotic digital soup in which everything is connected – indirectly or directly – to everything else. This coming Net of distributed resources will be tremendously powerful, and tremendously hard to harness because of its decentralized nature. It will be an ecology of computing machines, and managing it will require an ecological approach.” http://www.wired.com/1995/02/viruses/ View in LinkedIn

PLANT SWIMMING SPERM "requires an aqueous environment and thus limits their dispersal. Spermatophytes evolved mechanisms to protect their gametes from desiccation and so spread to almost all terrestrial areas. Flowering plants (angiosperms), which develop seeds from ovules that are enclosed in an ovary, represent the most successful phylum, comprising an extraordinary diversity of species dominating today’s terrestrial life.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674205214608996 View in LinkedIn

THE FEVERISH IMAGINATION. “Synthetic biology and man-machine interfaces. Creating machine viruses that hack the brain and invade the human mind might sound like science fiction to some, but the real science is rapidly approaching. Synthetic biology—the ability to design artificial life—wedded to the emerging technology of man-machine interfacing creates a combination that is potentially deadly and one more than enough to whet the appetite of criminal hackers.” https://lnkd.in/dEPU6w6 View in LinkedIn

CYBER NIGHTMARE. “But there are more immediate possibilities for computer-biology crossovers. Synthetic biology uses computers to store genetic information, and Apvrille and Lovet explained that hackers could infect these devices or the software used for DNA sequencing, thereby modifying whatever biological product is being synthesized.” http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-human-and-computer-viruses-merge-leaving-both-realms-vulnerable/ View in LinkedIn

WITCHES BREW. “By using multiple vaccines in the same animals, the farmers acted as matchmakers for the intercontinental viruses. The weakened Australian and European strains infected the same cells, “mated” with each other, and shuffled their genetic material (the technical term is “recombined”).” https://lnkd.in/dG485cW View in LinkedIn

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. “As for computer viruses speciating and evolving, Apvrille and Lovet believed that with enough data the code for a single computer virus might form spontaneously. Chances are slimmer, however, that it would include the necessary details to adapt and evolve. So far this scenario has only occurred in viruses in which researchers have encoded genetic algorithms to mimic evolutionary processes.” http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-human-and-computer-viruses-merge-leaving-both-realms-vulnerable/ View in LinkedIn

COMMON GROUND. “The origins of each virus are strikingly different: A computer virus is designed, whereas a biological virus evolves under pressure from natural selection. But what would happen if these origins are switched? Could hackers code for a super-virus, or a computer virus emerge out of the information "wilderness" and evolve over time? Apvrille and Lovet argued that both scenarios are possible.” http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-human-and-computer-viruses-merge-leaving-both-realms-vulnerable/ View in LinkedIn

TELEPATHY. “Ten years ago, the US National Science Foundation predicted ‘network-enhanced telepathy’ – sending thoughts over the internet – would be practical by the 2020s. And thanks to neuroscientists at the University of California, we seem to be on schedule.” https://lnkd.in/e7pQZVU View in LinkedIn