Reproducing codes

Only since the middle of last century has it become apparent that life is intimately connected to the ability of codes to replicate. These codes are variously written in molecules (e.g. DNA and proteins), in memorized actions (e.g. tradition), in sounds (e.g. song and speech), on paper (e.g. text and images), and in digital media. Codes evolve through selective replication, and in that sense play a role which is complementary to that of organisms and cultures.

If the foregoing is true, then we might want to pay attention to the fact that new kinds of codes are easily replicated on the web. In addition to letters for making words, whose replication took a giant leap with invention of the printing press and libraries, and sounds whose replication took a giant leap with the invention of audio recording and radio, two dimensional videos with sound are now recorded and able to traverse the globe in seconds. Although this doesn't change organisms per se, it may change the nature of communities just as circulatory and nervous systems (YouTube for molecules?) changed how individual metazoans get by.

How does this changing picture of code replicability serve to modify the various narratives by which we live?

Neolithic habit

An important ancestral use of language was probably the use of ideas to represent other humans. Do you know any folks who act as if the reduction of human beings to code was a perfect fait accompli?

Representing people with ideas is a useful, even necessary, approximation in today's immense global community. However the dangers of taking the equivalence, between a human and a category or stereotype, too literally are legion as well. What examples of this pop into your mind?

The fact that egregious examples of "human abuse via stereotype" seem to effectively employ radios, TV, and the internet may be telling us this: Ideas that can replicate by taking advantage of a neolithic trait will do so, whether it's in the interest of humans or not. If so we might want to figure out which fun-to-replicate ideas serve our collective interests, and which don't. How can we do that?

Missed perspective

Diverse behaviors, from the kamikaze behavior of worker bees protecting the hive to the tradition of female praying mantids who dine on their mates, serve not individual survival but the ability of molecular codes (like DNA) to replicate. Now that idea codes can replicate electronically, we should keep an eye out for things that serve the interest of ideas but not the interest of individuals.

For example, consider the idea that we should treat certain folks as subhuman. If someone says that it's OK to treat you in this way, then you might either: (A) echo the idea by saying that folks should treat them as subhuman, or (B) downplay the idea as an ill-informed reaction that we must guard against given our neolithic heritage in this electronic age.

Note that in case A, by imitating those with the bad idea you serve the idea. Moreover, by ignoring the real shortcomings of the promoters (ie. that they offer no solutions) or by treating them as worthy adversaries, you might help distract from the real challenges that we face while lending credibility to those with the bad ideas.

In case B you might illustrate how those who promote the bad idea have no solutions to offer anyone, if indeed that's the case. This helps to put the bad idea and those who promote it in their place. It also puts the onus on you to offer balanced solutions, e.g. which tangibly support public health, individual freedom, family values, informed politics, cultural diversity, and scientific awareness.

Which of these two choices do you like best?

Scoping ideas

Satellite radio, like national TV, is a platform for non-local content. Thus hidden behind its market attractiveness (and potentially high production values) is a capability for purveying spectacle only on a national scale.

Is this a benign fact, or does it bring with it fundamental changes in what folks spend their time thinking about, and the ways they might interact through communications?

Imagine cells in your body trying to respond in an informed way to the world around. They communicate with one another using a finite set of recognizable molecules.

Hence they represent objects in the world around in those terms: "If that's an adrenaline siren, we had better run to shelter quickly!" "Hello, serotonin, long time no see." "Did testosterone just walk in the door?"

So already it's clear that living things, when they communicate, necessarily reduce things in the world around to molecular (or idea) codes that only silhouette what they're intended to represent.

Now let's complicate things by creating new channels for distribution of those molecules. When you cut your finger, instead of keeping the blood-clotting enzyme released in the area of the wound, imagine that it's instantly made available by "molecule youtube" everywhere in your body. If that enzyme is not somehow tagged as "meant for the cut and not the brain", this could cause some trouble.

In other words, just as our bodies need molecules made for local distribution (e.g. within a cell or within an organ) and other molecules for distribution throughout the body, so do our minds need locally-tuned ideas as well as ideas marked-up for global distribution. If we don't label them accordingly and ask folks to respect the difference, in these days of rapid electronic communication we should not be surprised if locally-targeted broadcasts are having bad effects globally, and vice versa.

Can you think of any recent examples of this in the news?

Your nanodecisions

If I thought my insurance provider was managing my risks, I'd be wrong. Every time I decide for or against: (i) eating an apple, (ii) walking through a cloud of smoke, (iii) putting my hand on a newly-encountered surface, (iv) taking a short-cut to work in my car, (v) clicking on a weblink, or perhaps even (vi) reading a book title, I am encountering new excitations and/or codes and therefore taking a physical risk. Hopefully, I'm also taking responsibility for the decision.

Is this a trivial fact that pertains only to me, or to you? Quite the contrary. Our communities are built on our individual ability to observe critically, and make these decisions in an informed way. They count on each of us as professional observers and decision makers, daily choosing a balanced trajectory along paths strewn with a million unavoidable risks.

As these risks become more complex and perhaps more challenging, it's crucial that we leverage our evolving abilities to communicate. In other words, this is an important question: How can we help one another think and communicate about our everyday choices, and how they relate to the risks we (and our communities) encounter on various scales of space, time, and organization?

Here a few ideas that sound good to me:

• Budget some extra time for talking with folks who have different perspectives.
• Learn about how the world is different to lifeforms on different size scales, like ants in the milliworld, microbes in the microworld, and viruses in the nanoworld.
• Read about processes that affect our world on different time scales, like solar evolution on the billion year scale, geological change on the million year scale, climate change on the thousand year (and shorter) scale, resource depletion on the hundred year scale, carbon dioxide emission on the ten year scale, and information technology whose global impact changes annually.
• Finally, discuss the impact of these processes on public health, the nature of friendships, family interactions, community participation, cultural involvement, and our understanding of the world around.

What other things might help?

How many levels?

There's input that directs your attention, and then there's input that's useful on more than one level. Which do you find more satisfying?

For example, saying "The new kid in school talks funny" highlights separation between a newcomer to class and the kids you've known for a while. That's about all.

On the other hand, "Oscar said his uncle taught him to dive for pearls" if true is informed about the newcomer on more than one level. Specifically it tells us that he comes from a place that is different, but like us he has a name, a gender, an uncle, an ability to learn, and some cool technical knowledge to boot.

I bring this up, because there may be solid scientific reasons to prefer communications of the second kind over the first. For instance, baby plants and animals today depend on cells biased toward molecular communication of the second kind for their embryonic development.

Group balance?

On this blog we've mentioned the challenge of getting our act together on six layers of organization: looking in/out from skin, family and culture. This isn't easy, at least not for me.

Giving myself the benefit of the doubt, I figure that by and large folks in any organization might come up a bit short. This shouldn't be a problem, as long as we move beyond individuals and focus on making behaviors of the group informed to all six levels instead.

The multiscale awareness discussed here is like political correctness. When folks are un-PC it's often entertaining and easy to empathize, even though it's disastrous when the behavior of institutions ignores due respect for facts, cultural and political diversity, or family and individual rights.

In this sense political correctness poses a similar challenge. Can we respect the innate tendency to speak our mind willy-nilly while ensuring that our institutions as a whole don't degenerate over time?

What does it take, and what situations can YOU list where we've managed to pull this off?