A Universe of Self-replicating Code

:: George Dyson :: speaks to the Edge.org, about the wonder and mystery of self-replicating code in relation to data, space travel, Apple, advertising, stock prices, memory and the wider phenomena at play in the frenetic soup of co-mingling data that is the new universe of the digital century.

The link has a 27 minute video and a full transcript.  And while it is just a talking head and incredibly monotone, stick with it, there are some profound ideas being explored here:

“But what we’re missing now, on another level, is not just biology, but cosmology. People treat the digital universe as some sort of metaphor, just a cute word for all these products. The universe of Apple, the universe of Google, the universe of Facebook, that these collectively constitute the digital universe, and we can only see it in human terms and what does this do for us?

We’re missing a tremendous opportunity. We’re asleep at the switch because it’s not a metaphor. In 1945 we actually did create a new universe. This is a universe of numbers with a life of their own, that we only see in terms of what those numbers can do for us. Can they record this interview? Can they play our music? Can they order our books on Amazon? If you cross the mirror in the other direction, 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.”

via the edge