The alive and interesting bits
Order Inside the Organism
This is a human zygote. You and I are some 50th or 60th descendant of this cell. This cell evolves into a remarkably complex organism made up of 35 trillion cells of different kinds. Inside this single-cell exist coiled tape-like structures etched with, billions of years of life’s war stories, learning strategies, records of the ancestral environments in which they thrived, and the blueprint to create a human. They are written and stored in a unique language involving 4 alphabets and the grammar of which we are still trying to decipher.
These tapes are strands of DNA, about 1% of DNA are genes that encode information such as the timing, production, and quantity of proteins. Through a process called gene expression, this information stored in the genes is translated into various types of proteins. But 99% of DNA does not encode information that creates proteins, about 8-15% of the non-coding DNA regulates the levels of gene expression creating variations in the structure and function of proteins they generate. Although there have been new explanations of what 85% of the non-coding DNA does, they are still incomplete.
Depending upon the expression and regulation of genes the information stored in the DNA creates different types of proteins. The proteins then organize themselves in various ways to generate the complex and dynamic molecular machinery which perform a set of crucial functions resulting in a highly ordered, coordinated, and self-organizing behavior of the cells. Based on variations of the proteins and the structures they create, there are about 200 different types of cells that make up different parts of ourselves. These cells then organize themselves at many scales forming various tissues, organs, and organ systems that make up a human being.
The ability to produce complex living matter like ourselves can be attributed to the process of physically instantiating the information stored in genes and reconfiguring continuously until certain conditions of dynamic equilibrium are met. Upon studying how living beings create, store, and process information, they reveal interesting spatio-temporal variations which if we understand deeply enough would unravel mysteries about our origin and potentially capture the essence of living beings. This can also unlock capabilities such as programming and engineering living matter, human longevity, and other tools to accelerate our ability to expand into this universe. (Interesting fact: it’s currently estimated that 1 gram of DNA can store around 215 Petabytes)
Order inside the Super Organism
We see structure and order all around us, in organizations of people, in the physical infrastructure connecting various parts of the world, in bodies of knowledge, and most evidently in the complex digital world that we are imbued in.
Advances in technologies such as printing, electricity, mechanical automation, automobiles, and information processing have enabled us to amplify our ability to effect change and extend ourselves into the world. Printing changed the thought patterns of the whole world, automobiles greatly enlarged the distances we could travel, electricity changed the way we do our daily activities and laid the foundation for the industrial revolution, and television and information technology became extensions of our minds and experience.
The growing economy of the world emerges from the aggregate creative and inventive activities that take place in society. The ability to creatively reorganize the bits of reality we are imbued in is fundamental to the process of creation. Think about it, every physical product that you use every day is an embodiment of bits of information that have been assembled in a precise way in the physical world. Consider the example of personal computers, starting with common sand, a compound called silicon is extracted to create thin wafers on which millions and billions of tiny structures are carefully designed and etched creating a chip, many such chips which perform different functions are integrated and assembled with external parts made of plastic and metal to create a computer that we use every day. The secret behind transforming grains of sand into things that can send us to the moon, collapse the physical distance between our loved ones, and change the way we express ourselves, is in the way that we store and process information. New explanations and ways of creating things become knowledge, which when stored and shared through various media become capabilities shared with anyone who has access. Therefore, this innate ability of all living things to create new information, share and process them is the primary driver of evolution, widespread order, and economic growth.
The volume of data/information created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide from 2010
This video visually represents the evolution of the internet from 1997 to 2021.
A map of the internet juxtaposed onto the map of the physical world
The reality we experience is in many ways a new layer of our mind, conscious experience is ostensibly a collective projection of the internal order and change on this external layer. We create what we believe creates us. I like to think of this layer as an exocortex, extending beyond the neocortex, it is an integration of experiences of groups of minds, organized and interacting in complex ways creating a single living organism. The internet reflects various properties of the layer, it acts as global memory for this new cortical layer. It is a new medium for the social organism to self-organize and evolve into infinity.