A Universe of Self-Replicating Code - John Brockman  ## Metadata - Author: **John Brockman** - Full Title: A Universe of Self-Replicating Code - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/a-universe-of-self-replicating-code ## Highlights - there really is a universe of self-reproducing digital code. When I last checked, it was growing by five trillion bits per second. And that’s not just a metaphor for something else. It actually is. It’s a physical reality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j39zynqa0b0c0pj27g1vpsgy)) - But, we now live in a world where they *did* get loose — a world increasingly run by self-replicating strings of code. Everything we love and use today is, in a lot of ways, self-reproducing exactly as Turing, von Neumann, and Barricelli prescribed. It’s a very symbiotic relationship: the same way life found a way to use the self-replicating qualities of these polynucleotide molecules to the great benefit of life as a whole, there’s no reason life won’t use the self-replicating abilities of digital code, and that’s what’s happening. If you look at what people like Craig Venter and the thousand less-known companies are doing, we’re doing exactly that, from the bottom up. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j3a06pbszqtcdhx7qrqa3nbj))