Living things accumulate and reproduce information. That’s really the driving principle behind life, and behind evolution.
But humans have invented a new method of accumulating and reproducing information. It’s digital information, and it’s growing at an astonishing speed. The number of people using the internet is growing, as are the devices connected to it through the Internet of Things.
Digital information can copy itself perfectly, increases in copy number with every download or view, can be modified (mutated), or combined to generate novel information packets. And it can be expressed through artificial intelligence. These are characteristics similar to living things. So we should probably start thinking about digital technology as being like an organism that can evolve.
Digital information replicates with virtually no energy costs, and has rapid generation times. Artificial intelligence can beat us in chess and on game shows. What’s more, it’s faster than us, smarter than us in some arenas, and is already in charge of activities that are too complex for us to do efficiently.
To biologists, that sounds like the digital world might be able to out-compete us, as we argue in apaper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
Any newly evolving entity can cause upheavals for life on Earth. In fact, all the majorevolutionary transitions in the history of life have come about via changes to information storage and transmission.
And the digital revolution has certainly changed the way information is stored and transmitted.
The current storage capacity of the internet is approaching 1024 bytes and is growing at 30% to 40% per year, showing no signs of slowing down.
In the 3.7 billion years since life began, information in living things (DNA) has reached the equivalent of about 1037 bytes. Digital information will grow to this size in 100 years. That’s an evolutionary eye-blink.
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Decision systems and artificial intelligence networks mimic human brains, and coordinate our everyday interactions. They decide on what internet advertisements we are exposed to, execute the majority of stock exchange transactions and run electric power grids. They also have a significant role in human mate choice via internet dating sites.
While we do not necessarily feel that we are the mere flesh-bots of our digital overlords, the merging of humans with the digital world has now passed the point of no return.
In biological terms, fusions like these between two unrelated organisms are called symbioses. In nature, all symbioses have the potential to turn into a parasitic relationship, where one organism fares much better than the other.
We need to start thinking about the internet as an organism that can evolve. Whether it cooperates or competes with us is cause for considerable concern.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/digital-progress-is-starting-to-look-like-evolution-in-nature-and-that-could-be-a-problem-2016-1
