Digital Biology: How Nature Is Transforming Our Technology and Our Lives

Viruses, bugs, bots, ants: the metaphors, language, and realities of the digital world increasingly parallel those of the biological world. This vigorous book shows why those parallels are appropriate, even natural.

By studying the biological world and applying it to cyberspace and by using the natural processes responsible for life within computer systems, evolutionary biologist Peter Bentley writes, "we are overturning all preconceptions of what computers can and cannot do." They can do much, of course. Computers today can grow architectural models from digital "genes," can detect the difference between healthy and malignant cells, can even mimic certain behaviors of living beings. Tucking a handy primer in biological theory among sometimes heady discussions of the digital universe, Bentley focuses closely on the workings of computers today, projecting what might be true of those machines just a few years from now thanks to the workings of evolution--not strictly Darwinian evolution, to be sure, but evolution all the same.

Of interest to a wide range of readers, Bentley's book raises provocative questions as it prowls around inside the "benign cream-colored boxes" that surround us. --Gregory McNamee