I have a question, one inspired by your hinted-at concept of autonomous software automata. I once read a story about an alien computer virus attacking earth through a radio telescope down-link, and then spreading through the internet to take over the world’s computers. (That’s just what aliens do, right? Even virtual ones.) The alien malware had hopped from planet to planet, like a galactic plague, parasitizing whatever advanced technology it located.

I originally dismissed this concept, thinking it highly unlikely any code could run on a hardware platform totally unknown, and possibly very different, from anything its designers had ever encountered. The idea of this software being able to infect multiple hardware platforms on a number of unconnected alien civilizations seemed to me unlikely. Parasites are highly evolved to be specific on one, or at most a few, hosts.

But, if I understand you right, and there are certain characteristics all computing devices must share in common, then this concept is not that far-fetched.

Which brings me to another question, the human brain is an analog computing device, and it doesn’t seem to have an architecture like our von Neumann or Turing machines. Would we be vulnerable to these hypothetical viruses, especially since our organic brains don’t have digital input?

Just because we have constructed theoretical frameworks to generalize our computing machinery doesn’t mean that other types of computing machines aren’t possible.

I’ve been wanting to reply to your post since you posted, but it’s a big subject and really calls out for one of those lengthy rambles I just don’t have time for right now. But I’ll try to jot down some rough thoughts on it.

When Life came out, the mainstream programming style was function-based, and object-oriented programming was still in the future. Thus, Life was seen in terms of its algorithms, and it was about the power of algorithms to produce emergent behavior.

People who got into Life focused all their creativity on the design of the thingies, in pursuit of the holy grail the persistent object, and the holiest of holies, the mobile persistent object. And reproducers/shooters were cool too. Even though formally Life was about algorithms, the algorithms were set in stone, and people looking for thrills explored structure in Life.

Fast forward, and modern programming is all about creating virtual structures. Machines, structures that persistent inside the digital world, often just waiting, responding to stimulii, and producing outputs. And with the Net we’ve created a larger ecosystem in which a multitude of instances of digital machines can interact and cooperate. Digital commensalism.

The modern digital machines are vastly more complicated and powerful than the little digitalicules of Life, but they’re of the same taxonomical kingdom. Form interacts with the rules of their world to produce behavior. It’s a kind of life, yet an incredibly alien one, in some way inhabiting a shadow universe alongside our own. The game of Life does point the way to digital life.