If principles of life are universal, could life emerge on the internet?

I posed the question to evolutionary dynamicist Martin Nowak of Harvard University, developer of a mathematical model of evolution's origins, the period during which unique chemical structures experienced mutation and selection that guided them toward replication – and thus to life.

Though Nowak's focus is biological life, the principles seem broadly applicable, perhaps even to configurations of electrons coursing through the Internet's silicon and fiber-optic substrate.

"Computer viruses are some form of evolution," said Nowak.

"Viruses fulfill replication, mutation and selection – but people don't consider them to be alive, because they think life has to be made of chemicals," said Irene Chen, a Harvard systems biologist who specializes in early biomolecules.

"We can definitely make things in a computer that fulfill the criteria for life that NASA uses, except it's not chemical," she added, and cited the AVIDA program at Michigan State.

Indeed, computer viruses and e-mail spam have arguably displayed evolutionary characteristics. But Nowak was more interested in the forms of social life produced by the internet.

"It's already an interesting phenomenon that allows people to function in a different way," he said. "It leads to very different properties than what were out there before."

His words echoed those of microbiologist and complexity researcher Carl

Woese. "Man is the one who's undergoing this incredible evolution now,"

he said earlier this year in my article on complexity and evolution.

"We see some in the insects, but the social processes by which man is evolving are creating a whole new level of organization."

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Image: The Storm Worm malware as visualized by MIT's Alex Dragulescu; from WikiMedia Commons, diagram of an RNA polymerase protein.*

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