- We humans have been trying to accelerate
our own evolution for millennia, and while in some ways we appear to be
getting away with it, biological computing could well test the forbearance
of Mother Nature.
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- Until now, the most ambitious efforts
to outwit natural selection have been cloning and the Human Genome Project,
which sets out to map the results of random mutation and natural selection
on our collective genetic inheritance. Scientists embark on these projects
not out of mere curiosity but with the hope of remaking ourselves into
organisms more fit for survival than our ancestors.
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- But photocopying genes and building a
repair manual for them are only ways of tinkering with natural selection.
Far more ambitious are efforts to meld machines and living cells, efforts
being undertaken now in several areas of research. If these endeavors ever
realize their goals, the personal computer will become very personal indeed.
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- Consider the work of researchers at British
Telecommunications in the area of implanted chips. One project, Soul Catcher,
seeks to develop a computer that can be implanted in the brain to complement
human memory and computational skills. In addition, it would enable the
gathering of extrasensory information -- in this case, data transmitted
by wireless networking.
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- This area of research may seem far-fetched,
but it is really the logical extension of devices such as pacemakers, ocular
implants (which simulate hearing for the deaf) and neuro-stimulators, which
send small electrical charges through nerves to alleviate certain kinds
of pain.
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- At the same time that electronics is
making its way into the human body, biological organisms are instructing
computer chip design. British Telecom is investing in Soul Catcher not
only for the long-term potential of brain-chip implants but on the assumption
that, conversely, the workings of the human central nervous system can
teach chip makers a thing or two about network efficiency.
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- After all, while our information storage
capacity and computational skills are limited compared with those of computers,
the responses of even a 1-year-old child to stimuli such as pain, light
or sound suggest that the nervous system is a far more robust network that
the fastest Ethernet.
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- Biology already is invading computer
architecture. Two University of Rochester professors -- Dr. Animesh Ray,
a biologist, and Dr. Mitsunori Ogihara, a computer scientist -- collaborated
two years ago in building a rudimentary device that uses nucleotides to
perform functions typically handled by transistors in a silicon processor.
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- And across the continent, in Santa Clara,
Calif., engineers at a company called Affymetrix are making computer chips
containing DNA to diagnose genetic mutations.
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- Will the merging of machine and organism
bypass evolution, or is it merely an extension of the evolutionary process?
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- Peter Cochrane, the head of research
at British Telecom as well as a celebrated futurist and a specialist in
"human-computer interfaces," embraces the latter view. In fact,
he says the future of the human species depends on our continuing and expanding
ability to process information. If not, he wrote in a 1996 column for a
British newspaper, "systems more efficient at information processing
may supplant us."
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