{"id":21114,"date":"2016-01-23T08:47:34","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T16:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/study-suggests-the-internet-really-could-out-evolve-humanity"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:14:50","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:14:50","slug":"study-suggests-the-internet-really-could-out-evolve-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/study-suggests-the-internet-really-could-out-evolve-humanity","title":{"rendered":"Study suggests the Internet really could out-evolve humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/study-suggests-the-internet-really-could-out-evolve-humanity.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>This article was written by Michael Gillings, Darrell Kemp, and Martin Hilbert from the University of California, Davis, and was originally published by <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/not-so-science-fiction-after-all-the-internet-could-out-evolve-humanity-53162\">The Conversation.<\/a><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/institutions\/university-of-california-davis\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Living things accumulate and reproduce information. That\u2019s really the driving principle behind life, and behind evolution. But humans have invented a new method of accumulating and reproducing information. It\u2019s digital information, and it\u2019s growing at an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2012\/05\/the-future-growth-of-the-internet-in-one-chart-and-one-graph\/257811\/\">astonishing speed<\/a>. The number of people <a href=\"http:\/\/www.internetlivestats.com\/\">using the internet<\/a> is growing, as are the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com.au\/how-the-internet-of-things-market-will-grow-2014-10\">devices connected to it<\/a> through the Internet of Things.<\/p>\n<p>Digital information can copy itself perfectly, increases in copy number with every download or view, can be modified (mutated), or combined to generate novel information packets. And it can be expressed through artificial intelligence. These are characteristics similar to living things. So we should probably start thinking about digital technology as being like an organism that can evolve.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/study-suggests-the-internet-really-could-out-evolve-humanity\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article was written by Michael Gillings, Darrell Kemp, and Martin Hilbert from the University of California, Davis, and was originally published by The Conversation. Living things accumulate and reproduce information. That\u2019s really the driving principle behind life, and behind evolution. But humans have invented a new method of accumulating and reproducing information. It\u2019s digital [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[385,418,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-internet","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21114"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68747,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions\/68747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}