The Art, Music And Computer Science Of DNA 95
Build6 writes "As part of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure, many news publications are writing about what has been done with the discovery so far; The Economist has a very interesting one about DNA's use in art and music. ... You can read all about it either by picking up a copy of The Economist (it's well worth the money, I've subscribed for over a decade), or online." And Clint Harris writes "As part of its series commemorating the 50th anniversary of 'the first scientific description of DNA' NPR recently aired a story comparing DNA to software (RealAudio or Windows Media). 'For many, the best analogy for the way DNA works is that it's like a computer program at the heart of every cell. Some of its programming tricks bear an uncanny resemblance to ones the human brain has dreamed up...DNA is [like] spaghetti code because nature has been tinkering with the system for billions of years like a bad programmer.'"
Bad Programmer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that sure is an arrogant statement. The chemical, physical and biological systems of nature are the most complex systems we know of. Nature is influences by a seeingly infinate number of variables. We don't understand much more than we do.
Our understanding of the world is far too small to be critiszing nature works and it's language. When humanity can create a WORKING system thats 1/1000th as complex as the natural world is when we can even start to make arrogant statements such as this. Today is not yet that day.
I think that was kind of the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Natural selection cannot play God, because it is a blind process with no goal in mind and no means to get to a predetermined endpoint.
-John Alcock, Animal Behavior, 7th ed.
Programs are tools for a purpose. DNA is not.
Billions of Years? (Score:2, Insightful)
That isn't very efficient. Microsoft did the same thing with the Windows codebase in only 20 years
Seriously, though, I don't think this statement is as arrogant as some of the posters before me claim. Nature IS a bad programmer. Its arsenal consists of trial-and-error and brute force.
Given the scale nature works on (billions of years) it's not a bad way to go about things. A few million years testing out a given design seems slow and ponderous to us but from the point of view of evolution itself it's no big deal. Plenty of time to try again.
There's apparently been plenty of time for nature to develop a sense of humor. [pl.atyp.us]