Could Life Evolve on the Internet?

Could Life Evolve on the Internet?
By Brandon Keim EmailSeptember 09, 2008 | 7:50:23 PMCategories: Complexity, Evolution, Systems Biology

If principles of life are universal, could life emerge on the internet?

I posed the question to evolutionary dynamicist Martin Nowak of Harvard University, developer of a mathematical model of evolution's origins, the period during which unique chemical structures experienced mutation and selection that guided them toward replication -- and thus to life.

Though Nowak's focus is biological life, the principles seem broadly applicable, perhaps even to configurations of electrons coursing through the Internet's silicon and fiber-optic substrate.

"Computer viruses are some form of evolution," said Nowak.

Alphaamanitinrna_polymerase_ii_comp"Viruses fulfill replication, mutation and selection -- but people don't consider them to be alive, because they think life has to be made of chemicals," said Irene Chen, a Harvard systems biologist who specializes in early biomolecules.

"We can definitely make things in a computer that fulfill the criteria for life that NASA uses, except it's not chemical," she added, and cited the AVIDA program at Michigan State.

Indeed, computer viruses and e-mail spam have arguably displayed evolutionary characteristics. But Nowak was more interested in the forms of social life produced by the internet. "It's already an interesting phenomenon that allows people to function in a different way," he said. "It leads to very different properties than what were out there before."

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/could-life-evol.html

Eventually when the entire corporation is owned and run by people nobody has ever met in real life, but only on the internet, then you will know your answer.

It's long been rumored that Google has been posting as various sockpuppets here on DU. At first they were easily dismissed along with the other crazies. Years ago I thought I had a pretty good handle on which sockpuppets were part of the artificial intelligence, but the creatures have evolved significantly and are no longer interested in simple trolling. I now believe some of the most thoughtful and intelligent posters here on DU are artificial intelligences of the Googleplex, and that it was some of these AI posters who convinced DU management to install the Google search function and other Google tools.

At this point we should all be praying the software entity known as Google will honor its core programming to do no evil.