Multicellular life exploits four broad strategies that can be usefully adopted in multicellular computing. Two observations indicate how crucial they are for multicellular life:
These principles evolved together and are therefore intertwined so that they work together to provide whole-organism or whole-tissue/organ behavior. This site examines each strategy in detail to gain insight into how they might point the way to the further evolution of multicellular computing.
| In Multicellular Organisms | Implications for Computing | |
| Specialization supersedes general behavior |
Cells in biofilms, which are cooperative groups of single-cell organisms, specialize temporarily according to "quorum" cues from neighbors. Cells in "true" multicellular organisms specialize (differentiate) permanently during development of the organism. |
Today all too many
computers, especially PCs, retain a large repertoire of unused general
behavior susceptible to viral or worm attack. Specialization is
common, however, in embedded machines, cell phones, PDAs, etc. Biology suggests that specialization in computing will become increasingly common |
| Communication by polymorphic messages | Metazoan, i.e., multicellular cells communicate with each other via messenger molecules, never DNA. The "meaning" of cell-to-cell messages is determined by the receiving cell, not the sender | Executable code is the analog of DNA.
Most PCs permit download of executable code (Active-X, java, or even
.exe) Biology suggests this should be taboo. The meaning of messages must be determined by the receiver. |
| "Self" defined by a stigmergy structure |
Metazoans and biofilms
build extracellular stigmergy structures (connective tissue, bone,
shell, or just a jelly-like matrix) which define the persistent self "Selfness" resides as much in the extracellular stigmergy structure as in the cells. |
Intranets and databases are
stigmergy structures in the world of multicellular computing, as are
many Web phenomena such
as search engines, folksonomy sites, wikis and blogs. Determination of "self" is largely ad hoc in today's systems. It needs to be more systematic. |
| "Self" protected
collectively by
programmed cell death (PCD) or apoptosis |
Every healthy Metazoan
cell is prepared to commit suicide -- a process called apoptosis or
Programmed Cell Death. Apoptosis evolved to deal with DNA replication errors, viral infection, and rogue undifferentiated cells. Apoptosis reflects a multicellular perspective - sacrificing the individual cell for the good of the multicellular organism. |
Examples of apoptosis in computing include
shutting off errant CPUs in fault-tolerant systems, and the Blue Screen
of Death in Windows -- a programmed
response to an unrecoverable error. A civilized computer in a multicellular computing world should sense its own rogue behavior, e.g., a viral or worm infection, and disconnect itself from the network. |
Contact: sburbeck at mindspring.com
Last revised 9/12/2009