Collective Evolution: “The reason for my fascination with DNA as software is that its origins are anomalous, with no plausible explanation when viewed in the context of modern technology.
Until now, people have received life experience only through the human mind - and it was completely based on personal experience and indirectly through communication, which, apparently, we draw from our mental experiences or the experiences of other people.
But they are always born of the human mind.
There was no way to take knowledge (life experience) directly, directly from another mind, without experiencing that self - with all life stories tied to their "identity."
But now that we have been able to recognize the logic of DNA through software - we can truly see it for what it is - a product of someone else's intelligence.
There is only one programming language we don’t know where it came from - and that’s DNA.
How is DNA an "organic" programming language? Geneticist Juan Enriquez tells us (video above) that DNA behaves exactly like our own floppy disks and computer software.
Promotional video:
How Enriquez describes DNA
The letters A, C, T, and G, shown in sequence, stand for chemicals, so “calculations” or “instructions” are biochemical, not in a silicon chip like in our computers, but the principle is the same.
Now, with the new CRISPR editing technology, we can not only copy and paste the genetic code - we can do search and replace.
Interestingly, before his death, Michael Crichton, the genius author of Jurassic Park and Westworld, warned of the dangers of corporate patenting of genes or DNA codes.
Imagine a company comes up with a DNA sequence to stop Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, but you have to pay them?
Like the programs we are familiar with - Google, Apple, Microsoft, and so on, any (encoded) program must have a mental base, otherwise it cannot be decrypted.
And in the case of DNA, now with CRISPR - it's being edited and reprogrammed.
For meaning to be discerned, it must be mind-born. By definition, a random picture is meaningless. Any meaning is the obvious product of some mental intent.
Having discovered program A, C, T, and G behind DNA, we exposed it as material created by the mind - all other programs we are familiar with are deliberate and based on a logical system - and could not have arisen by chance.
In DNA sequencing, we encountered a different mental product than our own, and we are working with it now - but what about the consequences?
First of all - by our very idea of what mind is - can we really know that our own mental experience is "personal" - and based on our own "identity" - or is it also likely that what we are do we experience as the mind, not attached to our "personal" brains, but in fact an omnipresent or at least a hidden aspect of Nature itself?
In computer terms - property or characteristic? And that our individual personality, attached to bundles of thoughts such as memories, as many Eastern traditions suggest, is an illusion?
So where could this scientific quest lead?
First, it confirms and recognizes that DNA is an organic programming language.
This means that it must be a deliberate product of intelligence with a specific purpose. In the case of DNA, this is probably survival and evolution.
Here's an example of the power of our own computer programming and why it can't be random.
Let's say you have a PowerPoint slide that you want to publish as an image on the Internet. You must save this slide as a JPEG file because the browser programming language (HTML) does not recognize a PowerPoint file, only certain image files, including JPEGs.
This is what is specific and governed by the rules. Laws must be respected.
Symbols must be arranged in a logical sequence in order to convey the correct meaning - there can be errors with DNA, which we call mutations or sometimes serious diseases, including cancer.
But the “meaning” of DNA can be deciphered - and this is called sequencing.
I delve deeper into the nuts and bolts of software and its meaning in more detail in my recent book, If DNA Is Software, Who Wrote the Code? - The deep meaning of the programming language of life."
I was thrilled to write this book, as well as to talk about this topic, because I came to him not only with knowledge from philosophy, but also from programming. This convinced me that the mental aspect of DNA origins was not a metaphor but a reality, and it opened up a different perspective on intelligence and consciousness for me beyond the conditioned personal beliefs I had previously.”
About the author:
Tom Bunzel has numerous publications in the field of technology. He has been a keynote speaker at InfoComm and PowerPoint LIVE and has also worked as a “technology guru” for corporations. His most recent book for Wiley / Jossey Bass is Interaction Tools: Presentation and Learning in the Social Media World. Recently, his focus has shifted to his studies at Tufts University.