Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
Living Computers : Replicators, Information Processing, and the Evolution of Life, PDF eBook

Living Computers : Replicators, Information Processing, and the Evolution of Life PDF

PDF

Download - Immediately Available
Please note: eBooks can only be purchased with a UK issued credit card and all our eBooks (ePub and PDF) are DRM protected.

Description

This accessible and entertaining book explores the fundamental connections between life and information and how they emerged inextricably linked, taking the reader on a journey through all the major evolutionary transitions.

It records the entire path of how life's information has evolved, starting from the growing polymers of prelife leading to the first replicators, through RNA and DNA to neural networks and animal brains, continuing through the major transitionof human language and writing, into computer clouds, and finally heading towards an unknown future. All currently known life is based on three classes of molecules: proteins - life's main structural and functional building blocks; DNA - life's information molecule; and RNA - a molecule that provides the link between these two.

Despite the existence of language and the new means of information recording and processing it enabled, at the current stage of life's evolution, the information stored in the natural repository of our planet's DNA archive remains indispensable.

If the DNA on Earth wereto become seriously corrupted, all cultural information and life itself would soon disappear.

However, does future life have to be reliant on these molecules or could a living organism be made of e.g. steel, rubber, copper, and silicon? What was life like when it first emerged on Earth billions ofyears ago?

What will life be like millions or billions of years from now, if it still exists?

Could future civilisations, including the possible heirs of the present one, persist without proteins, DNA, and RNA?

The author arms the reader with the knowledge required to speculate about such questions in an informed and reasoned way. Living Computers is aimed at students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines, from physics, computing, and biology to social sciences and philosophy.

The fascinating idea of life as a computational phenomenon will also appeal to a more general readership interested in our origins and future existence.

Information

Save 15%

£24.99

£21.24

Download - Immediately Available
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Delivered to your inbox

to transfer to your device

eBook Help

Is this the right eBook for
my device? How do I download
this eBook? See help and FAQs pages

Information