A magical evening of foment and ferment last night at Craig Venter’s house in La Jolla (with a helical staircase in the nucleus).
Bill asked the most astute and detailed questions about microbiology. Got the body rock going.
BillG Quotable: “DNA is the most interesting software there is.”
Venter and Gates…..How was the wine ….. digital or biological ? =)
"Quotable: “DNA is the most interesting software there is.”
And THE dominant software for Life TOO…. ; )
Funny biodigital connection…
Talking about genetic, an interesting study :
Did evolution come before life? From Martin Nowak and Hisashi Ohtsuki,
Very beautiful staircase!
That is rather flattering to be a guest as you are clearly the youngest man in this group of wise men and young women!
This photo could use more Jurvetson. I hope there’s not going to be a quiz on which of those tags goes with which face….
Ah, you want Notes I see…
hukuzatuna: Nope… that’s Bill Gates in the middle
PhotonQ: I could not get the link to load, but the concept of evolutionary development applies over many time scales and levels of abstraction. I blogged about these nested layers.. all the way to the Selfish Biocosm Hypothesis, where multiple universes seek to replicate themselves… John Smart recently published a good paper on the subject. The energy compression section starting on p.23. is pretty interesting:
Hierarchy: Computing Substrate, Binding System / Computation ‘Mechanics’
Physics: Matter, Nuclear exchange (strong forces)
Chem: Molecules, Ionic and covalent bonds (electromagnetic forces)
Bio: Cells, Cell adhesion molecules, weak peptide bonds
Socio: Brains, Synaptic weighting, neural arborization
Tech: Computers, Gated electron flow (molecular electronics)
Post-Tech: Black holes, Gravitons? (weakest forces)
Also some evo devo questions
And why Mr. Gates was interested in this subject? Is he planning or already doing something along "DNA" lines?
btw – he looks quite handsome on this picture – much better than in those much talked about commercials 🙂
i like the quote [from whom?] DNA … software – and we are all programmed mammals?
Must be humbling for the man to see a sample of DNA and try to compare it to Windows registry.
However I am even afraid that the DNA is not comparable to software, in the sense of what we mean by "software". It’s a poor reductionism to call it like that. This brings me the universal question: "-particle or wave?" This is: I perceive the open question (is DNA software ?) brings within more in itself than the sole, single answer or statement about it in effect.
What we may all agree on up to this point is that it’s all about information systems, whether in technology and biology. In the path of/to Biomimicry.
(btw I see that in that post I talked about malaria… what BG fights against with his foundation. Some fair coincidence:
"Maybe it is about natural sustainability that 3mill children die of malaria -among other diseases- per year…" )
Perhaps it’s a poor comparison because most of our software is symmetrically reductionist. When we look at some code, we can reverse engineer its function (granted, the Windows hairball is a tough nut to crack =)
Our software is just not that complex, yet, because it is mostly designed. So it does not transcend human intelligence.
Evolved systems, biological or in silico, embed a compounding computational complexity that is largely asymmetric. There is no analog of “reverse engineering” in “reverse evolution”. Information is lost across millions of iterative steps in the computation of evolution. When we look at an evolved information network, like the brain or signaling pathways, the inner workings are not easily understood (blog on this).
The complex systems that we find interesting, like the brain, can be derived from simple components, like neurons and DNA, and there need be no further magic within. While the magic of the system can be derived from simple elements, it does not denigrate the complexity of the system, where much of the richness lies in the information networks between simple elements. And it does not mean that the system lends itself to simple scrutiny and decomposition. Sure the brain can be seen to have a simple set of neurons, but that is a far cry from understanding its dynamic information networks.
There is no need for a homunculus or fairies to reconcile the nested layers of abstraction in evolved systems.
pegleg: The Matrix beta surrounds you. Ever feel compelled to go online and contribute to the collective? Here are a couple quotes from Albert-Laszlo Barabasi in Linked:
“While entirely of human design, the Internet now lives a life of its own. It has all the characteristics of a complex evolving system, making it more similar to a cell than a computer chip. Many diverse components, developed separately, contribute to the functioning of a system that is far more than the sum of its parts. Therefore Internet researchers are increasingly morphing from designers into explorers. They are like biologists or ecologists who are faced with an incredibly complex system that, for all practical purposes, exists independently of them.” (pp.149-50)
“It is impossible to predict when the Internet will become self-aware, but clearly it already lives a life of its own. It grows and evolves at an unparalleled rate while following the same laws that nature uses to spin its own webs. Indeed it shows many similarities to real organisms.” (p.158)
ttnk: Gates, like many computer scientists, is fascinated by the information systems of biology. With his foundation and personal investments, he is going hardcore into biology to help address global issues around disease, agriculture, and energy/water. In NY this week, Gates announced a plan to eradicate malaria
Too bad Gates wasn’t interested in Biology earlier – a study of natural systems that worked might have led to a better underlying formation of that ‘hairball’ of code called windows, moreso than the model he had in mind when creating Windows: playing Poker. By contrast, apple’s software was always more robust because the rules of engagement were tighter to start with – a higher standard of reliability was expected and designed in, hence fewer programmers dedicated to doing it the harder way (for them) and fewer total choices but supeior software and better ease of use for… oh yeah, the end user, remember them?. A simple case of superior process mgmt, but since it took so long, no one can attribute it to overall process. "Its the better boundaries that create the better freedoms".
I think we need some kind of primordial soup for evolving replicators.
Karl Sims did a great job stimulating the imagination with his work on the CM5
alife.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/alife/zooland/pub/research/c…
There’s some work by Ian Clarke that could be a pretty interesting substrate for evolving replicators:
blog.locut.us/2008/10/06/swarm-a-true-distributed-program…
The work I’m doing now with rule and policy based systems for Enterprise Computing is a precursor to evolving replicators–right now business processes "evolve" through a manual process of simulation, but if we can master the parameters of simulation there’s no reason why business processes cant evolve based on optimal multidimensional constraints.
Of course this would lead to nonlinear behaviors including periodic collapses. Probably not optimal yet for business applications, but there’s probably selection criteria for stability that you could add in just to prevent such scenarios…
Leave a Reply