Saturday, July 25, 2009

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Patterns: A day in the life of... Life

The molecular citizens of the primordial soup learned how to get along. They discovered it took less effort, they could be more comfortable, when they arranged themselves into certain patterns. They were even more comfortable if they made copies of themselves, creating a new level of social interaction, and thus more control over their environment. As they discovered these new concepts, they probably weren't aware that they were following an ancient pattern. These concepts had been discovered, and followed, many times before at levels smaller than they were concerned with; the levels that created them.

Eventually, some groups of citizens figured out that they could control their environment better if they put a wall around themselves. Walling off some private space, defending turf, turned out to be a potent concept. It allowed the groups inside to work closer as teams, with little interference from the natural chaos outside. Those teams got efficient. They became ever more sophisticated. The walled in areas became busy cities; each busily engaged running their internal machinery to help them survive better.

Surviving better means conquering space; wrestling it from the chaos and taming it so it can make you more comfortable. The space these cities operated in was a primordial soup of organic chemicals. To conquer it more completely took more size and sophistication than any one city could muster. Soon the cities got together in teams. As they organized, each city became a cell in a much larger machine.

It was efficient. These multi-cell machines developed into tools that could capture nutrients and process them to feed the many cities inside. It turns out that a really rich form of nutrients can be had by raiding other cities; so the machines developed offensive tools to chew up other cities for food. Then of course they had to develop better defense; not only from the chaos, but from the many other competing organizations. A new kind of space was born; competition from other multi-cellular organisms.

Even in our language, we often refer to head space, or cyber space, or the space that a certain business is competing in. It turns out that every time a new idea or type of organization proliferates, it creates new space. Then there is both co-operation and intense competition for control within that space.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

More than you think

Paul Hunt is wondering if we (our physical bodies) are merely the fruiting bodies of a vast network of cosmic connections... sort of like mushrooms are merely the fruiting bodies of a vast network of fungal connections.