Evolution and the Quantum Connection

Computing is a process of mapping from inputs to outputs. A quantum computer performs a physical mapping from initial quantum states to final classical states. This solution mapping process is called the ‘unitary evolution’ of the states of the system.

Solving a problem also represents a mapping from an information input parameter set to an output solution set. NP problems do not allow solutions to be reached under the constraint of serial computing because, as the input parameter space expands, the number of possible mapping pathways to reach an output solution also expands exponentially. NP problem solutions can be more efficiently solved by parallel quantum computing, the power of which increases exponentially at a rate comparable to the exponential increase in the solution set pathways or unitary evolution of the system. This can be modelled as a ‘sum over histories’ or path integral formulation of quantum theory.

As with computing and problem solving processes, evolution also may be thought of as a mapping from the system’s present information state to the target state of the environment. The Action in this case is the integral of the decision paths over an ‘evolutionary field’. The Least Action minimises this integral which is the mathematical process in the author’s theory that drives evolution. The D-Net evolutionary decision network provides a model of this mapping mechanism. The model predicts many different decision paths in the configuration space from input to output, but only a small proportion- the most efficient, are relevant to the system. The other paths are those with the smallest probability of success and can be cancelled out.

Each transition path, including the decision nodes embedded in it, creates a decision history. The sum of these decision histories, provides the evolutionary mapping function and may be integrated to provide the quantum decision integral or sum over histories, for the evolutionary process. Life therefore is an extremely efficient information processor because it incorporates adaptive learning decision pathways that over time maximise the efficiency of the information differential reduction process, within a unitary evolution framework.

In a sense the decision paths become shorter and more efficient, enabling the optimal evolutionary outcome or unitary transform to be achieved at the lowest energy cost,
just as the geodesic in Riemann geometry represents the shortest or most efficient path between two points. There therefore appears to be a strong connection between Riemann geometric functions and evolutionary decision functions, which allows the formulation of a metric to calculate the efficiency of the evolutionary process. In effect the minimal geodesic distance between the information state of the observing system and the target information state of the system’s environment, applying a unitary operator, is equivalent to the minimal number of ‘decision gates or nodes’ and the number of connecting links or steps required to achieve the appropriate adaptation.

In this process the complexity of the system is increased, through the acquisition of additional information, plus greater flexibility and efficiency in resolving the differential, which can therefore be applied to adapt to more complex future environmental challenges.

 Such a metric would therefore be a function of the density of decision operations or transformations required to implement the unitary evolutionary transform plus a measure of the efficiency of the information feedback mechanism to keep the evolutionary process on track. In effect, the evolution of the ‘decision matrix’ applied to minimise the information differential, allows the evolution of the system as a whole to be achieved. This in turn could be calculated from Frieden’s Theory combined with existing Quantum Information, Unitary and Network Theory.

Life's Function in the Universe

It is proposed that increasing evidence for the diversity and ubiquity of life in the universe indicates a strong Darwinian selection effect, which in turn indicates that life is an integral part of the Universe, playing a major role in its evolution as a living ecosystem.

Life as an Information Processor-

The traditional formulation and scope of physical laws fails to adequately describe complex biological systems. Describing life in terms of the laws of matter and forces is insufficient to capture its complexity or emergent properties. Life can be defined in biological terms by a number of processes and states including adaptation, reproduction, metabolism and evolution. Cell-based components and combinations are linked in multi-dimensional networks to create a living organism, each link defining a critical relationship. The complexity of these networks combined with a dynamic evolving process driven by the need to survive marks a key difference between animate and inanimate phenomena.

However adaptive living systems may be primarily differentiated by their capacity to utilise and process information by storing, monitoring and transforming it. Information is coded, stored and processed in the neural network structures of the brain and nervous system, the DNA, RNA and protein structures of the cell including its microtubule scaffolding, as well as the myriad other chemical, sensory, signalling and metabolic feedback loops that allow life to function within a complex environment.
By transforming information, life evolves towards greater complexity. The more complex life becomes, the better it’s able to learn, adapt and continue its trajectory in the universe.

Ubiquity of Life

With the discovery of a wide spectrum of exoplanets, now approaching 800- including some smaller planets similar to earth, It is now estimated that a substantial proportion of stars have planets, with 160 billion in the milky way alone, as well as potentially trillions of unbound planetary mass bodies and those that orbit brown dwarfs.
The latest simulations also suggest that planets may be common throughout the universe despite the diminishing rate of star formation, with even low mass, dim stars conducive to life on close orbit planets. In the future stars will be richer in the heavier elements critical to life - carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, created by earlier generations of red giant stars, while heavier elements up to uranium will continue to be formed by supernova explosions.
Therefore it can be inferred there is likely to be more life in the future universe, existing on earth-like planets, which will consist almost entirely of heavier elements.

In addition, the discovery of molecular oxygen ions in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Dione generated by bombardment from charged particles or photons from the sun or a moon indicates that the ingredients for life may also be abundant on icy space bodies. Subsurface water such as exists on Jupiter’s moon Europa, may also combine molecular oxygen with carbon, to generate life.

Added to this has been the discovery that life can adapt to and flourish in a range of inhospitable environments on earth, from deep ocean hydrothermal vents, to nuclear power plants and beneath the desert. New forms of RNA viruses linked to archaea have also been discovered in the boiling acid pools of the Yellowstone National Park.
Once life gets started it is also very tenacious. Five catastrophic events and many smaller ones have occurred since life’s emergence 3.8 bya, on occasions wiping out up to 90 % of life. But it has always managed to regenerate, often in similar forms.
It is therefore highly probable that life will continue to evolve throughout our universe regardless of catastrophic events on individual planets.

Now combine this cornucopia of potential life with our new understanding of the origins of life and Lee Smolin’s ground breaking work on Cosmological Natural Selection; extending the process of evolution to the creation of life-supporting universes across the vast landscape of different epochs and regions of the Multiverse. The result is a surprising shift towards a much more eco-friendly view of our universe.

Origins of Life

Our understanding of the origins of life and the universe has changed dramatically over the past 50 years, but only recently have the pieces of the jigsaw have come together, allowing us to see the future in a radical way.
There are a number of theories accounting for the origins of life. Did it emerge locally on earth or piggyback in the form of complex organic molecules or microbes on comets and meteorites from other planets within our own solar system or from deeper space?
Regardless, early life on earth did thrive despite the bombardment of sterilizing impacts of meteorites, perhaps by adapting to cooler habitats deep in the crust under the early oceans. Most ancient microbial fossils date from before 3 billion years ago, but the structure of cells implies a long history of even earlier evolution.

The first stage in the evolution of cellular life may have been originally based on an RNA- Ribonucleic Acid template, predating DNA.
In 1980 it was shown that a strand of RNA can act as a template for making another strand of complementary RNA and in 1991 an RNA molecule was synthesised that could make copies of shorter chunks several nucleotides long and join them together. Some RNA molecules can also act as simple enzymes, enabling RNA to both encode information like DNA and perform cutting and joining operations like a protein enzyme.

RNA based life forms could therefore have evolved over millions of years prior to the evolution of the more stable DNA, assembling proteins as well as replicating other RNA molecules for information storage and transmission.
However RNA is more vulnerable to damage than DNA, so at some point in time evolutionary pressure forced proto cells to switch from making RNA copies of an RNA genome to DNA copies of a DNA genome.

But the central mystery of how such a molecule as RNA emerged from early chemistry has remained elusive. The enigma now appears to have been partly solved by Martin A. Nowak, a Professor of Mathematics and Biology and Director of the Program of Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University. He has developed a mathematical model of evolutionary dynamics, that simulates the emergence of a pre-life molecular system in the form of efficient self-assembling polymer chains; demonstrating that the molecular building blocks of DNA and RNA provide an evolutionary starting point in pre-life genesis, self-assembling more efficiently over time and accelerating the process of polymerisation.

By the 1960s living organisms had been categorised into two groups- prokaryotes and eukaryotes, with comparative genomics and proteomics strengthening the view that modern eukaryote and prokaryote cells had long followed separate evolutionary trajectories. The simpler prokaryotes, thought to be synonomous with bacteria have traditionally been considered the logical ancestors of the more complex eukaryotes.

But in the late 70s a three-domain hypothesis displaced this assumption. This standard model of genesis suggests that from a common ancestral root evolved three branches representing the domains of life. Genetic sequencing has since shown that life diverged first into archaea and bacteria. Eukaryotes may then have evolved from archaea, subsequently absorbing genes from bacteria twice and acquiring both mitochondria and chloroplast organelles.

But several other anomalies pointed to a more complex starting point. The pattern of evolution appeared not to be as linear or tree like as traditional Darwinian theory may have hypothesised. In fact, lateral or horizontal processes of gene swapping probably occurred many times. Eukaryotes may have evolved from some precursor cell that was the product of a number of gene transfers. The three major domains of life probably therefore arose from a population or pool of primitive ancestral cells that differed in their genes.

By tracing back common proteins from all three it appears plausible that a global organism- the Last Universal ancestor- LUA possibly existed as one superorganism across the oceans of the world as early as 4 billion years ago, evolving In a cooperative rather than a competitive manner. So this latest theory suggests that life emerged a number of times in a variety of ways and provides solid support for the convergent theory of evolution.
A new twist has recently added an extra and crucial dimension to this story- the discovery of a form of life based on inorganic chemistry. Up until the present all life on earth has been assumed to be based on organic biology- carbon in the form of amino acids, nucleotides and sugars etc.

Now Professor Lee Cronin at Glasgow University has engineered a form of self-replicating, evolving, non-carbon based cell with life-like properties. It has opened the possibility of creating micro organisms from inorganic chemicals- proving that evolution is not just a biological process. This suggests that there may be many alternate sets of non-carbon life forms and that the evolutionary principle may have much more general application than previously understood.

Supporting this argument, Nigel Goldenfeld a physicist and Carl Woese, the biologist who defined a new kingdom of life- the Archaea and developed the RNA World hypothesis, have hypothesized that life is a universal emergent phenomenon that occurs in systems that are far from equilibrium, as Ilya Prigogine originally proposed.
They postulate that evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena, but that it’s full potential has been historically limited by its original biological straightjacket.
One of the strongest and most obvious examples of evolution as a generic process is the genetic algorithm, as previously defined - a method that mimics the Darwinian process of mutation, crossover, selection and replication in abstract mathematical form. A genetic algorithm explores the evolutionary landscape, searching for optimal design solutions, reflected by the DNA processes of life, in the form of local minima.

This indicates that life, as it has evolved on Earth, is just one local solution within a vast landscape of possible options, biological or otherwise. If that's the case, biologists have been studying only a tiny fraction of a much bigger picture.

Creating Life- A New Horizon

Now with increasing confidence, humans have entered the creation business, generating new biological and artificial life forms supporting this hypothesis and expanding the future tableau of life.
Craig Venter and his team were the first scientists to sequence the human genome and have now created the first artificial DNA life-form; a tiny new bacterium or synthetic cell, controlled by human engineered DNA, with its genetic instructions determined by human life.
By creating the first biological life form humans have crossed the rubicon of creation by bypassing natural evolution, opening the floodgates of life’s evolutionary future.

New synthetic life structures can now be created to order by designing novel DNA, facilitating the assembly of genetic building blocks into living systems in the same way that electronic components are combined to manufacture electrical circuits.
Because of this breakthrough it will now be possible to create not only new types of bacteria, but eventually variations in the spectrum of many other living species – plants and animals, including perhaps a new species of humans. In other words, bringing biological life from the super-natural to the human-natural realm of genesis.

Concurrently with developments in synthetic biology, other variations of life in the form of Intelligent software agents and robots have been developed by computer scientists. Such innovations represent life’s evolution in the form of adaptable evolutionary software programs designed to provide autonomous and cooperative problem-solving support to humans through the application of artificial intelligence.
Software agents are a classic example of potential alternative emergent life forms, described as Artificial A-Life or Virtual Life in contrast to 'normal' Biological Life or B-Life.

The principles of A-Life are already being probed and analysed through computational models relating to complexity, self-organisation, diversity, feedback, autocatalysis, cellular automata, network and chaos theory.
Although such organisms might appear goal-directed, they simply do what evolution has shaped them to do. The apparent complexity of their behaviour is largely a reflection of the environment in which they find themselves. This complexity increases dramatically as the environment comes to include information feedback from biological living systems.

Now science’s Pandora’s Box has been opened to release three players in the great game of life- biological, synthetic and virtual. All three will have to learn to co-exist and accommodate with each other, As the biological, technological and social barriers dissolve they will eventually merge into a new entity- Meta-life- a universal autonomous manifestation of intelligence.
Humans are already cooperating in larger and more diverse groups via the Internet to solve more complex scientific, engineering and ethical problems. These require multi-disciplinary and real-time interaction across diverse fields of knowledge to solve the critical challenges facing life today including global warming, environmental pollution, population control, conflict mediation, disease management and the new frontiers of space exploration.
As a result, such virtual communities of researchers and social architects supported by AI technologies are already establishing a presence on the Web representing the prototypes of future symbiotic ecosystems- the early prototypes of universal Meta-life communities.
These developments clearly demonstrate that life is now at the threshold of its most significant transformation. In the near future, the links between AL, SL and BL will be virtually seamless. Powerful AI techniques in the form of neural nets, swarm systems, fuzzy logic and evolutionary algorithms, will merge with the massive pattern analysis capacities of the Web’s computational intelligence; complementing human decision making at a fundamental level and creating a permanent nexus.

Why does Life Exist?
Finally we return to the existential question of not whether life may exist in a kaleidescopic range of novel combinations in the universe, but why it exists at all?
According to Darwinian evolutionary principles, life’s generation and existence on this or any other planet is the result of a selection effect by its environment; not the result of random roulette chance or a deistic manipulation of the laws of nature of this universe.
This is the ‘Third Way’ hypothesis that the Centre has championed over the last ten years. The Universe has not adapted to the highly improbable set of conditions essential to triggering our form of life. Instead, life has adapted to the physical conditions set by the universe- which itself has adapted to the physical and chemical properties of the much larger multiverse.

That is why there is such a perfect and improbable fit for life’s existence on earth and why a certain class of earths, galaxies and universes are likely to be teeming with life similar to our our own. Based on the ubiquity of extreme types of life’s adaptation on this planet, alternate forms are likely to be equally abundant on different earths in different universes.
Part of the answer is connected to the revolutionary idea that cosmologist Lee Smolin introduced over a decade ago, which postulates that each generation of universes has the capacity to spawn child universes, each with slightly altered physical parameters and laws in a mutated form of its parent, eventually creating stars, planets, heavier elements, complex organic molecules and eventually life in some form.
In other words, universes capable of generating life will be also selected by the larger environment of a possible multiverse in the biological Darwinian sense, according to the rules of mutation, selection and replication.

This scenario can then be combined with new information-based evolutionary theories, to offer a third and more verifiable way of explaining life’s existence.
Since its genesis as single-cell organisms on earth nearly 4 billion years ago, life has continued to evolve towards higher levels of genetic and neural complexity; expanding its capacity for more complex information processing, decision-making and knowledge generation. This has allowed it to continue to adapt and survive in a radically changing environment and strongly implies the existence of a powerful Darwinian evolutionary selection process at work.
New information and decision network evolutionary theory also suggests the possibility that life is selected by the environment of the universe as an efficient form of information processor, with the capacity to progress towards higher levels of processing and intelligence, as predicted by stronger versions of the Anthropic principle. Such systems therefore have the requisite complexity and capacity to maximise the amount of information generated over the life of the universe.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the symbiosis of human and computational intelligence has greatly amplified the level of information and knowledge generation and will continue to do so at an exponential rate. This ratcheting process will likely result, in the view of a number of philosophers physicists and cosmologists, in the eventual emergence of a super-intelligent form of life and mind, expanding to become co-existent with the cosmos.
But regardless of such a final outcome, if life has been selected by its cosmic environment as an efficient generator of information, then its capacity to manage entropy and energy resources within its ecosystem -the universe, would be more efficiently and effectively achieved.
This then would be the primary function and role of life in the universe.
As a corollary, life could equally be seen as selecting the living space most appropriate to its continued and enduring evolution. Biological processes might in fact be the means of selecting those laws of physics that best boost life’s own survival. The prerequisite conditions for such opportunistic systems will narrow down the range of possible structures to a small proportion of available configurations, including but not limited to those in which the laws of physics support life as we know it.
A universe teeming with life therefore generates a rich ecosystem, exhibiting emergent system properties- an integral player interacting at every level, as it does on planet earth. It is a dynamic selection outcome of the world we live in and may indeed alter the universe’s capacity as a system to survive, by generating and applying information and knowledge on a grand scale.
The corollary is that the universe is a living entity – interwoven with and exploiting the properties of life.
This is a more realistic way to think of our universe- not as a remote landscape filled with stars, galaxies, black holes, gas and planets with some life forms thrown in by chance; but as a rich ecological system with life at the front and centre of its being.
Philosophical futures have shifted significantly over the past millennium, from the dark despair of the nihilistic ‘heat death’ of the universe to a more optimistic outlook based on an evolutionary ‘becoming’ paradigm.
The problem was that most philosophical models lacked a rigorous scientific basis, a mechanism capable of explaining life's interaction with the cosmos in anything but the most rudimentary meta-physical terms.
Recent forward thinkers such as mathematical physicist Professor Frank Tipler, have gone some way towards providing an alternative to this doomsday view; arguing that in the far future life may exist in a more abstract form, with the capacity to indefinitely delay such an outcome through the generation of an infinite amount of information. Another alternative may be that life will have the capability to create and populate alternate universes.

Tipler also argues that meta-intelligence becomes coexistent with the cosmos, with the rider that the Omega point or ultimate observer may be required to bring the entire universe into existence. In other words, the universe has no determinate form until observed and measured.
An Omega point is therefore postulated as an inevitable outcome of a Multiverse ecosystem capable of sustaining life.
This has enormous philosophical ramifications for us all.

Life Creates Life

The first artificial life form has been created by human biological life. Humans have crossed the rubicon of creation by bypassing natural evolution and by designing the first artificial life form, have opened the floodgates of life’s evolutionary future.

Craig Venter and his team were the first scientists to sequence the human genome and have now created the first artificial life-form; a tiny new bacterium or synthetic cell, controlled by human engineered DNA, with its genetic instructions determined by human life.

The scientists have made a synthetic copy of the genome of a bacterium- Mycoplasma mycoides. This man-made genome was then transplanted into a related bacterium- Mycoplasma capricolum. This process “rebooted” the cell so that it was controlled by the synthetic genome, transforming it into another species. The cell has since divided more than a billion times.

The creation of this living organism is the culmination of 15 years of research, costing more than $47 million. But the cost is miniscule in comparison with its glittering potential benefits. It promises a new industry, generating synthetic bacteria capable of cleaning up pollution, producing new forms of green chemicals and fuels, capturing CO2 in designed algae and providing vaccines against disease.

The creation of life has been an ongoing human endeavour for at least 50 years, since Stanley Miller successfully synthesised amino acids, essential for the formation of proteins and life, using simple molecules such as water, ammonia and methane, exposed to an energy source such as ultraviolet radiation.

Since that time a number of paths have been taken by researchers to recreate the genesis of life including-
Resurrecting extinct species- such as the marsupial Tasmanian tiger and Woolly mammoth- extracting still viable DNA and implanting it in related species such as the Tasmanian devil and African elephant. But the notion of resurrecting Einstein or Shakespeare as present-day geniuses is highly doubtful, because evolution is not just a product of genes, but is a dance between genetics and the environment.

Re-engineering current species- reversing evolutionary changes and genetic switches to recreate the previous ancestor; for example producing teeth in chickens as birds related to ancient dinosaurs. The importance of this technique is that it demonstrates life as a continuum, with many of the genes from yeast and fruit flies still existing in modern humans.

Cloning new species- this can be achieved using the technique of hybrid speciation, which involves first mating two closely related species, such as single-cell yeasts. A small percentage of the offspring spontaneously clone themselves and some also change gender, thereby creating a new species of yeast.

The current artificial life-form has been created by manipulating of the code of life– the chemical bases needed to develop artificial chromosomes and therefore novel amino acids, proteins and life.

Producing new life-forms to order by designing novel DNA, is a comparatively recent process. It is a direct consequence of recent successes in sequencing DNA as well as the creation of component genome databases. This facilitates the assembly of genetic buuilding blocks into living systems in the same way that electronic components are combined to manufacture circuits and chips or software modules to create business services.

Flexible and reliable fabrication technology, together with standardised methods and design libraries have enabled a new generation of biological engineers to already create new organisms from biological components from the ground up, providing the basis for the new science of synthetic biology.

Molecular biology has previously largely been applied as a reductive science, but now synthetic biologists are building organic machines from interchangeable DNA parts that work inside living cells- deriving energy, processing information and reproducing.

Concurrently with developments in synthetic biology, another new form of life- Intelligent Software Agents, have been developed by computer scientists, representing artificial life in the form of adaptable evolutionary software programs. These are designed to provide autonomous and cooperative problem-solving support to humans through the application of artificial intelligence- primarily evolutionary, swarm and knowledge-based algorithms.


But the Holy Grail of life’s creation – evolving a living cell from scratch- has yet to be achieved. This is because many separate initial evolutionary processes have to take place first, including the evolution of- cell containment vesicles, an optimal genetic code such as DNA or RNA with the machinery to translate it into amino acids and proteins; the incredibly complex epigenetic processes providing signaling pathways from the cell’s environment and methods to fine tune its basic DNA; plus the machinery of cell replication, development, apoptosis and metabolism etc

In a sense Venter’s achievement has relied heavily on hijacking the machinery of existing cellular operation– much as Einstein did by borrowing Riemann’s mathematical framework for his theory of relativity. In other words he piggy-backed a free ride to life.

But this doesn’t detract in any way from the monumental human achievement in understanding better the enigma of life and creating it afresh in its full glory.

Because of this breakthrough it will now be possible to create not only new bacteria, but eventually the complete spectrum of new life-forms – plants and animals, including perhaps a new species of humans. In other words bringing artificial life from the super-natural to the human-natural realm of creation.

This glittering potential is balanced by unforeseeable risks; a synthetic bacterium With the capacity to mutate and proliferate outside the lab, doing untold damage to the environment by accelerating new disease pathogens and affecting the genetic blueprint of crops and animals including humans. It also will have the capability to be used as a biochemical weapon.

But science’s Pandora’s Box has been opened yet again. Now there are three players in the great game of life- biological, artificial and virtual.
All three will have to learn to co-exist and accommodate with each other; as over time the biological, technological and social barriers dissolve and they eventually merge into a new form- Meta-life.

The Web Comes to Life

The Web is now evolving at an exponential rate- morphing faster than society's capacity to comprehend its future ramifications. Its structure and computational dynamics are enormously complex- capable of processing billions of transactions and creating many millions of new links and connections every day. Its growth defies the current simplistic models of evolutionary, network and knowledge theory.

The Future Web will emerge by 2030 as a symbiotic extension of life- intelligence on a global scale. It already functions as the central information processing hub for humans on the planet, linking a third of the planet’s population and enabling the successful design and delivery of most complex projects.

The Intelligent Web 4.0, now evolving from current versions of the Social Web 2.0 and Semantic Web 3.0, will interact with the repository of available knowledge of human civilisation- past and present, digitally coded and archived for automatic retrieval and analysis. It will mark the emergence of a new intelligent entity- a sentient and cognisant multidimensional network powered not only by billions of processors and ultra-fast, reliable communications, but also harnessing the power of new generations of biological and quantum computers, capable of processing millions of operations simultaneously.

Web 4.0 will be ubiquitous by 2030, powered by a smart self-organising and pervasive computational mesh- capable of autonomously spawning countless virtual networks- optimising, greening and maintaining its own performance. It will envelop and connect human life through smart devices and automatic sensors and power all facets of social, business and scientific activity- always on, available and aware.

It will link not only most of the planet’s individuals and devices, but communicate with many other biological and artificial life forms, as well as countless everyday electronically controlled cyber-physical devices. Its collective intelligence will cojoin biological- B-Life with many new forms of artificial A-Life- from humanoid self-learning robots to the intelligent software agents already roaming through cyberspace.

This seamless network of networks, is rapidly becoming the core asset of our civilisation, encompassing most of our information and knowledge legacy- algorithms, methods, processes, formulae, intellectual property and creative output- enabling most system research, development and service delivery.

Most significantly, it is evolving as a decision partner with humans in the management of the planet’s natural assets, built infrastructure and development projects, as we face the biggest challenges to our habitat and heritage. Through Web 4.0 and its future descendants, human intelligence will have co-joined with advanced forms of artificial intelligence and life, creating a higher or meta-level of knowledge processing. In effect these new cogniscent entities will explore alternative solutions and scenarios, evolving more powerful variants and equipped eventually with human-like emotions and the capacity to think creatively.

The principles of artificial life or A-Life are already being probed and analysed through computational models and at a public level through games such as Second Life. System principles relating to complexity, self-organisation, adaptive feedback, autocatalysis, cellular automata, and chaos theory are also being incorporated in models of artificial life and co-dependent organisms.

This level of collective intelligence will be essential for supporting the immensely complex decision-making and problem solving requirements, essential for civilisation's future progress particularly related to- global warming, conflict resolution, economic chaos, impacts of natural catastrophes and food and water scarcity.

Just as we routinely use computer design, control and modeling tools today and outsource the operation of superfast trains, planes, chemical refineries, manufacturing plants, stock market trading, web services and space missions to clever algorithms- so tomorrow this trend will extend to almost all processes, including personal medical diagnosis and research. Humans will stay in the decision loop but only only as co-partners; as components of the collective intelligence, even as smart software begets ultra smart algorithms, completely new ideas and theorems, which the human mind on its own cannot conceive.

By 2030 the web will manifest all the properties of a living superorganism- amplifying the mind power of its continuously connected 6 billion human processors, continuously learning and adapting through sensing its environment, expanding its collective intelligence and memory and monitoring and enhancing its own progress through countless feedback loops and statistical inference channels- while at the same time continuously mutating and self-replicating.

Multinational virtual teams of researchers are already establishing a presence on the Web to workshop ideas, generate solutions and implement projects with the aid of intelligent software. Research and development times for new products and services have already begun to collapse dramatically, with the time to bring new information services to market reducing from three years to three months over the past ten years. Utilising the technologies outlined above, over the next twenty years concepts will be seamlessly transformed to designs, designs to prototypes, and prototypes to production models, in time frames of weeks or days.

The emergence of the Future Web as a new life form will have an inestimable impact on all humanity and the planet as a whole. Evolving as the knowledge and decision hub of human society, it will accelerate social globalisation, cooperative research, knowledge discovery and symbiotic decision-making, as well as changing work-life balance of all humans in the future cyber-environment.

At the same time, synthetic biology, cyber-human symbiosis and bioengineering will also signal the creation of new and enhanced life forms for the first time in human history. This will open a portal via the web for the explosion of human potential beyond the confines of biological evolution alone.

The impact of the web on the evolution of the human brain is also likely to be very significant over the coming decades. Children are constantly being neurally rewired as the interactive internet becomes a seamless part of their lives in the form of video games and social networks.

Such games will continue on their trajectory towards creating worlds of virtual reality until there is no discernible difference from today’s reality. The impact of this increasingly fast sensory surround medium on humans is unknown, except that the young brain in particular will try to adapt to its new environment, in accordance with evolutionary theory, dramatically affecting social behaviour and development.

From a social perspective there will be great difficulty by the general community as well as most experts and professionals in coping with the scenarios outlined. The rate of scientific and technological change is becoming cognitively and socially overwhelming, making it extremely difficult to comprehend and analyse the bigger issues relating to future social impacts.

There will also be a high level of resistance in the general community to the implied cultural shifts and radical changes to the status quo of lifestyle and work practice involved; primarily resistance to sharing or ceding decision control to largely autonomous systems and new life forms- reasoning software forms capable of evolving higher cognitive functions such as consciousness, language, insight, imagination and creativity.

Although we have grown accustomed to using computers in the workplace and for social and service support over the past thirty years, working with new synthetic life forms such as intelligent agents and robots represent unknown territory for humans and will take a huge cultural adjustment. These challenges will be amplified by the need to gain acceptance on a global basis, often cutting across hundreds of years of cultural and social norms.

The intelligent web’s future cannot be entirely predicted, except that it will inevitably become more cognisant, with the capacity over time for increasingly complex problem-solving and decision-making.
The web is therefore not just a useful application running on the Internet. It is evolving as a collective sentient entity in its own right- interacting with and enabling humans as biological processing agents and in the process evolving a set of complex emergent properties that we can only vaguely imagine.

Cooperative intelligence has been beneficially applied over the eons on a small scale by every animal group, including those of humans, whether at the community, corporate or scientific level. But never before in human history have we witnessed the emergence of a new cyber life form with the potential to combine the mind power of billions of human and artificial brains, with the sum total of human intellectual capital and unimaginable computational power.

The evolution of the Web to level 4.0 and beyond is no doubt the most profound phenomena to confront human life in its chaotic history.
It offers both redemption and salvation from our destruction of the planet in the short space of 15,000 years. It also offers the next phase in human existence, from that of a warring but creative life-form, struggling to know itself and realise its potential, to a wise entity, capable of reaching the ultimate limits of harmony and fulfillment in its becoming universe.

Evolution and The Third Way

Why does Life exist at all and what is its purpose or function in the Universe?
This is the deepest and most intractable existential question that continues to confront philosophers and scientists today.
The two most popular current explanations are unscientific, disingenuous and totally unsatisfactory in the 21st century.

The first alternative - Intelligent Design, suggests that a supernatural force or deity has specifically designed our universe to realise its own potential and that of its creation- life.
A common argument in support of this proposition suggests that the properties of the universe including its shape, size, age and physical laws must have been fine-tuned for life by an outside omnipotent entity, because the odds of such a combination occurring by chance alone are astronomically small.
This is a modern incarnation of the same discredited watchmaker design argument used by William Paley in the 18th century, in an attempt to disprove Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

The second alternative is equally unsatisfactory, suggesting that chance alone has provided just the right Goldilocks combination of physical laws and constants in our world to generate the carbon-based molecular precursors of life; although conceding that evolution eventually takes control to finish the job.
This scenario has received support from the current Multiverse paradigm which proposes that our universe is just one of a very large or infinite number of distinct spatial volumes, each with its own set of characteristics and laws. It is therefore statistically possible that life arose in our universe and possibly others because of fortuitous chance alone.

Some theoretical support for this option is also provided by string theory, which confirms the possibility that a multiverse-type mathematical structure with an extremely large set of possible configurations is topologically feasible.
Nevertheless unquantifiable possibilities or mathematical feasibilities do not prove a real-world causal relationship.

Both these scenarios therefore fall far short of providing rigorous or even elementary evidence in attempting to answer this crucial question- how and why did the delicate and highly improbable combination of matter and forces essential for the creation of life came into existence in the first place.

However, a third pathway to the solution, which invokes evolutionary and information theory at a far deeper level, offers a more rational scientific explanation, without requiring the services of a either a deity or roulette wheel.

Part of the answer is connected to the revolutionary idea that cosmologist Lee Smolin introduced over a decade ago, which postulates that each generation of universes has the capacity to spawn child universes, each with slightly altered physical parameters in a mutated form of its parent. If these changes allow for small increases in inflation, this may kick-start larger universes that do not collapse as quickly as smaller ones and which will eventually have the capacity and longevity to create stars, planets, heavier elements such as carbon, complex organic molecules and eventually life in some form.

In other words, universes capable of generating life will be selected by the larger environment of a possible multiverse in the biological Darwinian sense, according to the rules of mutation, selection and replication.

It is now proposed by David Tow that this scenario could be combined with new information-based evolutionary theory, currently being developed by the Centre, to offer a third and more verifiable way of explaining life’s existence.

Since its genesis as single-cell organisms on earth nearly 4 billion years ago, life in its various forms has continued to evolve towards higher levels of genetic and neural complexity; expanding its capacity for more complex information processing, decision-making and knowledge aggregation. This has allowed it to continue to adapt and survive in a radically changing environment and according to David Tow implies the existence of a powerful secondary Darwinian evolutionary selection process at work.

New information and decision network evolutionary theory suggests the possibility that life is selected by the environment of the larger universe as an efficient form of information processor, with the capacity to progress towards higher levels of processing and intelligence, as predicted by stronger versions of the Anthropic principle. Such systems therefore have the requisite complexity and capacity to maximise the amount of information generated over the life of the universe. This is the key to the puzzle.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the symbiosis of human and computational intelligence has greatly amplified the level of information and knowledge generation and will continue to do so at an exponential rate. This ratcheting process will likely result, in the view of a number of philosophers and cosmologists, in the eventual emergence of a super- intelligent form of life and mind, expanding to become co-existent with the cosmos.

For example, eminent physicist Professor Frank Tipler in his ground-breaking book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, postulates that life could survive indefinitely in a re-collapsing universe undergoing an infinite number of chaotic space-time oscillations. This would occur if such super-intelligent life forms were able to send an infinite number of light rays back and forth between themselves in subjective time, processing an infinite amount of information. In other words, accelerate the rate of information processing faster than the approach of the final singularity or big crunch.

But regardless of such a final outcome, if life has been selected by the cosmic environment as a mechanism for generating an increasing amount of information, the capacity to manage entropy and energy resources within the universe would be more effectively achieved. Therefore by selecting those physical laws and states most likely to generate information – the cosmos has created the potential to extend its own as well as life’s survival.
This then would be the primary function and role of life in the universe.

As a corollary, life could equally be seen as selecting the living space most appropriate to its continued and enduring evolution. Biological processes might in fact be the means of selecting those laws of physics that best boost life’s own survival. The prerequisite conditions for such opportunistic systems will narrow down the range of possible structures to a tiny proportion of available chemical configurations, including those in which the laws of physics have a high probability of supporting life as we know it.

In addition, the primeval mythological notion of a god can be more precisely defined; in terms of a communal intelligence eventually pervading the universe- an infinitely complex network or system of systems connecting all life, with each node acting as a powerful information processor, but inseparable from the whole. The definition of a god within a scientific context therefore is transformed from a fuzzy anthropomorphism into an emergent and continuously unfolding phenomenon, leveraging to higher and higher levels of knowledge, wisdom and potentiality.

The Future of SETI

David Hunter Tow, Director of The Future of Life Research Centre, provides a possible solution to the mystery of why signals from alien civilizations have not yet been received by the SETI project.

SETI has recently celebrated its 50th birthday. On the surface, the project still radiates optimism, driven by the possibility that a credible signal might one day herald the existence of another intelligent civilisation in the galaxy.

Over the past 50 years SETI has focused primarily on radio frequency transmissions, while also dabbling briefly with the optical spectrum, searching for laser pulses from outer space. A number of more radical approaches have been canvassed, including infrared transmissions, gravity waves and neutrinos, but these appear to be infeasible at present.
In the meantime the SETI Institute continues to apply its Allen Telescope Array, an array of 42 small dishes, to the search, now introducing a new project– setiQuest, designed to open up its search algorithms to the public, providing a new source of computational power and innovation.

Over time, a number of additional powerful instruments and techniques have been deployed by the astronomical community, to probe the mysteries of other candidate star systems across the galaxy, including searching for signs of life. Discoveries of other solar systems similar to our own, including those that may harbor earth-like rocky planets are becoming increasingly likely, with some predictions of up to 100 million earths in the galaxy.
The glittering prize therefore seems tantalizingly close.

But something’s missing from the project. Under the invisibility cloak of eternal optimism there are growing doubts about SETI’s methodology. After 50 years there should have been something to show- some hint of intelligent life or even a reason for the lack of it - and there was. For a fleeting moment back in the seventies an unusual spike in the spectrum appeared- the Wow signal. But then disappeared just as quickly as it arrived. With hindsight however it might have provided a clue to the mindset of other civilisations.

Conservative estimates of life in the galaxy point to the existence of a spectrum of evolutionary outcomes, based on the large number of probable earth-like planets that almost certainly harbor microbial populations.

A few like our own civilization will have achieved the ability to infer the existence of other life forms by codifying the laws of nature and the physics of the electromagnetic spectrum. A larger number, able to grasp and walk upright, may be on track to harness the early technologies of tool-making and agriculture. And of course many more will be at the beginning of their evolutionary cycle, like salmon swimming upstream against the current; tiny animals with proto-brains and nervous systems desperately trying to reach the calmer waters of survival. And many more proto-civilisations that went extinct before they could realize their full potential.

And then just perhaps, a handful of super-civilisations- SCs may have evolved; those with technologies well in advance of our own- capable of sending and receiving powerful messages across the galaxy and even universe. These would possess the ability to harness the inexhaustible power of clean fusion energy and overcome the threats of dangerous climate change and global conflict.

Regardless of the probabilities, which currently the best science is unable to credibly quantify, super-civilisations are our best hope of making meaningful contact. But in order for SETI to achieve this objective it must factor in a big chunk of crucial science that’s currently missing from its strategy.
It must incorporate the social dimension.

Super-Civilizations are not only likely to have already discovered our existence, but they will have a much deeper understanding of the universe at large - not only at the technological level but also at the social and ethical level. (Ref SETI and Alien Ethics blog)

Meanwhile on planet Earth, our culture of aggression and killing continues to dominate. We are a civilization that is still largely intent on solving conflicts by force, although a smarter way is on the horizon (Ref Future of War blog). And because of their advanced observational technology, SCs would be fully aware of this risk factor.

No doubt they have the scientific capability to monitor our progress and are doing so already. It is not that hard to sense and analyse chemical emissions spectra in our atmosphere, while also inferring our progress along the evolutionary path of social development.
They would long ago have mapped the 400 billion star systems in our galaxy and determined their planetary composition- selecting the most likely earthlike planets to monitor for intelligent life. This is likely to be achieved here on earth within the next hundred years or so if we survive our current chaos.

A super-civilization with a mere 500 year head start on us technologically- just a fleeting moment in the history of the universe- would also possess the capability of communicating and travelling over vast distances in the cosmos, possibly at greater than the speed of light. Perhaps this would be achieved through new physics such as short cuts through spacetime or quantum teleportation.
They will also have overcome their aggressive evolutionary legacy and advanced light years beyond this barbaric bottleneck. All life on earthlike planets with environments similar to our own will highly likely have followed similar evolutionary trajectories. Such a conclusion is strongly supported by current biological Convergence Theory.

As for the mythology that suggests SCs are likely to covet our planetary resources- simple logic suggests the opposite.
Any advanced society would have long since had access to unlimited energy supplies by harnessing green power sources or nuclear fusion. On an earth-like planet an SC would also have been able to exploit similar material resources as well as quantum, electronic and chemical processes, synthesizing its own meta-materials as we are beginning to. Plant and animal ecosystems would also be similar to ours (Ref Convergence Theory) and no doubt fully conserved and sustainable because of their mastery over the entire biosphere.

The fact is that at this stage in our society’s development we would have virtually nothing of any substance to offer them.

Any similar or less developed civilizations will almost certainly be as aggressive and acquisitively territorial as us, but in any case would not have the technological capability to reach our planet by any form of space travel, just as we could not reach them. It is unlikely that we will be capable of exploring beyond our own solar system for another 100 years and then mainly by deploying robotic probes.

But above all SCs would have developed an extremely high level of ethical and moral legitimacy, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to overcome the enormous challenges involved in creating an advanced society. They would have been forced long ago to subsume their naturally basic aggressive tendencies, and cooperate as one species living on one planet, in order to overcome the massively complex issues of poverty, justice, global warming and conflict, that we as a species are just coming to terms with.


SCs, if they exist, are no doubt waiting for us humans to reach the minimum threshold of maturity as a civilization; just as candidate European nations must reach a satisfactory level of democracy, human rights and financial governance before being accepted into the EU family of nations. Our threshold must include requisite non- warring, ethical and human rights solutions, the sustainability of our critical ecosystems as well as technological and computing capability. The emergence of Web 4.0 and 5.0 will help meet those criteria and threshold as early as 2050. (Ref The Future of the Web blog)

Then and only then will they deem it timely to communicate with us and begin to share their knowledge and perhaps acceptance into their federation of other super-civilisations.

Imagine if we knew of the existence of another civilization that had warred for centuries, almost wiped out its civilization by nuclear weapons, which they still retained, and was well on the way to global greenhouse armageddon, in addition to reaching breaking point in its democratic institutions. Would we want to communicate with them? I doubt it.
We should not the ones worried by unfriendly overtures from an advanced alien culture. It is they who would be extremely wary of us. As with a parent and child relationship, they cannot save us from our own mistakes. They will wait and watch.

So could this be the basis of our lack of other-world contact at this point in our history? If such super-civilisations have indeed survived and flourished in our galactic neighbourhood, then yes – this is the most likely scenario. The sole enigmatic signal we received may indeed have been an attempt by another advanced society to communicate with us. But it may well then have been withdrawn for fear of attracting the unwelcome interest of an immature, war-like civilization.

If the SETI project is to ultimately succeed and it must, then it will have to face this possibility and apply a portion of its resources to educating the rest of the human race to the likely consequences of our dysfunctional social actions beyond the borders of our own blue dot.

The benefits of first contact with a super-civilisation will be immeasurable, but the pre-conditions that an advanced society might mandate for mentoring our progress, will be our continued progress towards social wisdom as well as scientific knowledge.

It is unlikely therefore that we will receive a response to our signal without the counterpoint of social progress. Or if we do, it may come from another putative civilization as dangerous as ourselves.


Blog

The Future of Health

By 2020 most developed countries will have established comprehensive electronic Health Record systems to track lifetime patient medical and general population health histories, including personal DNA genome sequences and SNP microarray test results. An individual’s medical records will then provide personalised drug and vaccine protocols based on genetic response variants. Whole-of-life e-health records will be accessible across the developed and much of developing world, eventually allowing the creation of online global networks of population health records from pre-birth to death.

Global e-Health archiving will also accelerate the provision of expert biomedical advice and services to populations across the planet, utilising the communication modalities of the Web and smart mobile phone technologies. These will also function as personalised helpers, performing real-time monitoring and transmission of vital patient status data including images, via ubiquitous sensor networks. These will forward continuous data to government and private healthcare hubs for expert online assessment and intervention.

In addition, health and lifestyle support will be managed increasingly in conjunction with global professional care and patient social networks. Such networks operating via the open standards of web-based technologies will promote collaboration between patients, caregivers and health providers, offering interactive exchange of case information- symptoms, diagnosis and treatment options; improving lifestyle outcomes and ensuring individuals feel less isolated.

By 2025 A Universal Health Grid will be in operation connecting e-health client records seamlessly across all nations;. providing ubiquitous communication support for the acquisition and delivery of life enhancement knowledge on a global basis. In addition, scanned images will be linked in vast virtual databases, to provide remote expert support to local medical teams and practitioners. This will facilitate advanced surgical techniques, applied remotely using robotic, virtual and augmented reality technologies.

By 2030 tens of thousands of human genomes from diverse populations will have been sequenced and made available online for research into the genetic basis of common diseases. Analysis will have moved from understanding the role of single gene mutations to the highly complex networks of multiple genetic interactions. Polygenic natural selection has allowed new traits to rapidly sweep through populations in the past, allowing humans to adapt to extreme climates and new food sources
The genetic basis of the major diseases and injuries afflicting humans will have been traced and effective therapies addressed covering- Neurodegenerative - such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimers; Pathogenic and parasitic based- - such as malaria, dengue fever, cholera and lyme; Cancers and auto-immune diseases; Organ failure- such as heart, pancreas, lung, liver and kidney; Injuries to nervous system, joints and bone- such as spinal cord trauma and arthritis. Improvements in therapies will continue at an accelerating rate.

In addition, the power of the web will be supported by a new way of unlocking a deeper understanding of nature and its evolution in the form of Systems Biology- already marking a paradigm shift from traditional reductionism to a more holistic level of understanding of biological phenomena. This approach interprets organisms in terms of information processing networks at the system rather than component genetic, proteins and environmental level. Systems biology also marks the beginning of a more quantitative science, highlighting the causality and dynamics of biological interactions by applying mathematical models and the capability of simulating interactions at all levels- cells, organs and the total organism.

Stem Cell therapies, including both adult and embryonic stem cell differentiation, will be commonly applied to the repair of human tissue and organs including—skin, cartilage, blood vessels, bone, eyes, spine, pancreas, liver and heart muscle. The future treatment of diseases such as heart failure and breast cancer will be revolutionised by such technologies, with the option of growing new organs and tissue inside the human body using the patient’s own stem cells and biodegradable scaffolds to avoid immune rejection.

Stem cell technology will complemented by Molecular Engineering techniques such as gene therapy, involving the correction of genetic mutations by inserting reengineered genes into cells. Molecular engineers are already beginning to create custom-built proteins with enhanced functions, including the capacity to correct disease genes causing hemophilia, muscular dystrophy and sickle cell anemia.
Understanding the role of RNA in cells will also be vital in understanding gene silencing and targeting cancer and other diseases.

By 2035 Cyber-Human symbiosis will also be routinely applied, allowing the direct linkage between computer-electronic control and virtual reality technologies and human biological systems. This science is already includes the use of -
Sensory augmentation implants such as early retinal and corneal implants;
prosthetics such as a neurally-controlled limbs; brain interfaces, overcoming paralysis using brain signals; artificial hippocampus- assisting patients with memory deficits;
brain image extraction and reconstruction and interactive humanoid robots to provide human companionship and physical support.

By 2040 Neuro-Engineering technology will be commonly applied enabling enhancement of human intelligence, memory and creativity. Significant advances are already being made towards simulating the brain’s capacity for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition, using advanced 3D fMRI and Optogenetics technologies; allowing better analysis of neural circuits to reveal new neural regulation and drug treatment targets.

Cognitive enhancement compounds will also be widely used. These will be applied to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia as well as generally enhancing human decision-making, alertness and memory capability. The impact of cyberspace on the evolution of the brain is also likely to be very significant over the coming decades. Children are constantly being neurally rewired as the interactive Web becomes an essential part of their lives in the form of virtual realities, multimedia and social networking.

Brain simulation is also a nascent field offering huge future potential. A brain with a billion neurons and ten trillion synapses- equivalent to a cat’s cortex or 4.5% of a human brain has been simulated by IBM; while a team of European scientists have taken the first steps towards creating a silicon chip designed to function like a the cortex of a human brain. With research and development converging on all fronts in this field- both at the hardware and software level, it will be only a matter of time before a brain with human-level complexity is scaled up for experimental use.

Molecular biology has largely been applied as a reductive science but now synthetic biologists are beginning to build machines from interchangeable DNA parts that work inside living cells, deriving energy, processing information and eventually reproducing. Flexible reliable fabrication technology, together with standardised methods and design libraries have enabled a new generation of biological engineers to already create new organisms from biological components from the ground up..

By 2045 the nanobiotechnology revolution of new and enhanced life forms will be common. For the first time in human history an artificial life form with synthetic DNA has been created by Craig Venter This will open a portal for the explosion of human potential beyond the confines of biological evolution alone. In addition, Medibots are being designed. These are tiny robots only a few millimetres in size that can work internally and are designed to enter the body through the mouth, ears, eyes or lungs and swim through the bloodstream.

These will be widely used to conduct robotic surgery, install medical devices, including a camera in a capsule small enough to be swallowed, deliver drugs and take tissue samples. Nanoscale machines and motors will be inserted inside cells which can then self-assemble and seamlessly integrate with other cell functions. Smart implants and tiny biological fuel cells are also on the drawing board, capable of producing electricity from glucose and oxygen in the bloodstream.

By 2050 the super-intelligent Web 4.0 will have combined human and artificial intelligence. It will be ubiquitous, powered by a smart computational sensory, grid/mesh, enveloping and connecting human life and encompassing all facets of social and scientific activity- always on and available.

This capability will be essential for supporting the immensely complex decision-making and problem solving requirements essential for civilisation's future progress, including applying algorithms to manage medical research, diagnosis and treatment. The Web will then have emerged as the senior partner in complex medical diagnosis and specialist intervention, as well as genetic discoveries; driving health progress into the future.

Within 40 years the rate of medical/health advances will have accelerated knowledge discovery to the point where it will begin to eliminate most human diseases, doubling human lifespan to 150 years. Combined with accepted human cloning and breakthroughs in organ replacement and cognitive enhancement, the stage will be set for the emergence of a new generation of Transhumans.