Building a huge global network connecting billions of people may be one of humanity's greatest achievements to date, but microbes could overtake us by three billion years. These tiny, single-celled organisms are not only responsible for all life on Earth. They may have their own version of the World Wide Web and the Internet of Things. This is how they work.
Like our own cells, microbes process DNA fragments as encoded messages. These messages contain information for assembling proteins into molecular machines that can solve specific problems, such as repairing a cell. But microbes don't just receive these messages from their own DNA. They also ingest DNA fragments from their dead relatives or exchange them with living comrades.
These pieces of DNA are then incorporated into their genomes, which are like computers that control all protein equipment. Thus, the tiny microbe is a flexible learning machine that intelligently seeks resources in its environment. If one protein machine doesn't work, the microbe tries another. Trial and error solves all problems.
But microbes are too small to act on their own. Instead, they shape societies. Microbes have lived in giant colonies of trillions of members since the beginning of time. These colonies even left behind mineral structures known as stromatolites. These microbial metropolises, frozen in time like Pompeii, testify to life that existed billions of years ago.
Microbial colonies are constantly learning and adapting. They developed in the oceans and gradually conquered the land - and at the heart of their development strategy was the exchange of information. As we have already understood, individual members of society exchange chemical messages in a very coordinated manner. Thus, the microbial society effectively creates a collective “mind”.
This collective intelligence directs pieces of software written in DNA code to trillions of microbes with one goal: to fully explore the local environment for resources using protein machines.
When resources are depleted in one place, microbial expeditions are put forward in search of new promised lands. They transmit their discoveries to the base using various types of chemical signals, urging the microbial society to transform from settlers to colonizers.
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Thus, microbes eventually conquered the entire planet, creating a global microbial network that resembles our own World Wide Web, but uses biochemical signals instead of electronic digital ones. In theory, the signal emitted in the waters of the South Pole could quickly reach the waters of the North Pole.
Internet of Living Things
The similarities with human technology don't end there. Scientists and engineers are working to expand our own information network to the Internet of Things, integrating all kinds of devices equipped with microchips that allow us to see and communicate. The refrigerator can alert you when you are running low on milk. Your house will tell you when it is robbed.
Microbes built their own version of the Internet of Things a long time ago. We can call it the "Internet of Living Things", although it is better known as the biosphere. Every organism on the planet is connected in this complex web, which in turn depends on microbes.
Over a billion years ago, one microbe found itself inside another microbe, which became its host, carrier. These two microbes formed a symbiotic hybrid - the eukaryotic cell - the basis for most of the life forms we know today. All plants and animals evolved from this microbial fusion and thus have a biological "connection" that links them to the "Internet of Living Things".
For example, humans are designed in such a way that we cannot function without trillions of microbes inside our bodies (our microbiome) that help us even with such simple things as digesting food and developing immunity. We are so overwhelmed with microbes that we even leave unique microbial imprints on every surface we touch.
The Internet of Living Things is a perfectly functioning system. Plants and animals live on ecological waste generated by microbes. Meanwhile, for microbes, all plants and animals, as author Howard Bloom argues, “are just cattle, whose flesh they dine on,” whose bodies they will one day digest and recycle.
Microbes are also potential space tourists. If humans go into deep space, our microbes will fly with us. The Internet of Living Things can stretch out long, grabbing arms in space.
The paradox is that we still perceive microbes as inferior organisms. The reality is that microbes are the invisible and intelligent rulers of the biosphere. Their global biomass surpasses our own. They are the inventors of the information society. Our Internet is just a by-product of the microbial information game started three billion years ago.
Ilya Khel