Robert A. Freitas Jr., Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific
Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization, First
Edition, Xenology Research Institute, Sacramento, CA, 1979; http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm
16.4Machine Life
Can machines live? Evolve? Think? Many scientists would answer
in the negative. Gears, relays, and integrated circuits certainly aren’t
alive in the traditional sense. Evolution typically involves reproduction and
natural selection, but no Earthly machines are known to reproduce themselves.
And, it is said, cold steel cannot cogitate.
From the xenological point of view, however, we’ve already
determined that the most useful definition of life involves the concept of negative
entropy, or negentropy. That is, to be considered "alive" an entity
must (1) feed on negentropy (absorb order from the environment) and (2) store
negentropy (create order within itself). The amount of stored information in
a living organism determines exactly how alive it is.
Philip Morrison at MIT has taken a first stab at a quantitative
analysis of "how much life" is present in any entity of specified
complexity. It will be recalled from Chapter 6 that
a refrigerator or other similar contemporary machine technically is "alive"
by our definition, because it feeds on negentropy and uses this to create internal
order. But most machines "alive" today aren’t very alive because
they store only miniscule amounts of information at the molecular level. Morrison
has shown that patterns imposed on lumps of inert matter will not begin strongly
to affect the matter thermodynamically "until the pattern is constructed
with molecular fineness."1704 His calculations, summarized in
Table 16.3, pertain to an hypothetical black-and-white checkerboard pattern
superimposed on a slab of otherwise inert matter.
Table 16.3 Molecular Fineness
and the Thermodynamic Significance of Patterns of Information
(modified from Morrison1704)
Nature of the Pattern
Characteristic Size of the Pattern
Contribution of the Pattern to Thermodynamics of Inert Matter (Relative Intensity of Life)
Macroscopic mechanical pattern
1 centimeter
~10-22
Visible pattern
½ millimeter
~10-18
Microscopic pattern
1 micron
~10-10
Electron micrographic pattern
0.1 micron (1000 Angstroms)
~10-7
X-ray lithographic pattern
100 Angstroms
~10-4
Molecular pattern
10 Angstroms
~10-1
We may view the last column of Table 16.3 as representing,
in a sense, the intensity of life achieved by an information-laden pattern imposed
on inanimate matter, Clearly, the finer the pattern (Figure 16.3), the more
"alive" is the entity. By implication, we cannot concede that machines
are "very alive" until their components are constructed with molecular
fineness. Only then will the information storage in machines be comparable to
those found in biological lifeforms.
Figure 16.3 Microstructure in Machine Lifeforms and Biological
Lifeforms Inhabiting the Planet Earth
SCALE
(both photographs)
An x-ray lithograph of a magnetic
bubble computer memory device developed by IBM (state-of-the-art, 1977).2700
An electron micrograph of a polygon-shaped
bacterial virus, or phage, of a strain designated as "lambda" by microbiologists.
The smaller splotches peppering the picture are bacterial ribosomes, the
RNA containing protein factories of living cells.2701
The scale in both photos is identical.
The average bacteria would fill this entire page if photographed
on the same scale.
The need for a biochemistry as a prerequisite of organic
life is far less compelling for beings of purely artificial construction. As
such creatures perhaps can be modified or repaired simply by replacing modular
parts, the only fundamental requirement appears to be Morrison’s "molecular
fineness of construction." The distinction between biological and mechanical
life be comes quite blurred -- are not machines constructed of iron and silicon
with molecular patterns examples of "ferrosilicon-based lifeforms"?
