| [ EnglishOnly ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): sungil () 날 짜 (Date): 1994년08월22일(월) 06시44분51초 KDT 제 목(Title): Computer virus, a life ? Thanks to jhan for the interesting news. Dr. Hawking is one of those whose thought gave me a significant influence. But, as a biologist, I disagree with what might appear to be the concept of life in his statement. Metabolism creates a local environment that decreases the entropy inside the organism through the reproduction of information, energy, and material substances. To my understanding of current concensus (mainly but not solely among biologists), such a system is called life only if it involves the reproduction of nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) that are capable of synthesizing proteins. Dr. Hawking seems to be extending the concept of life, but my point is that there is no sufficient support yet as to why we need to do so. (By this I mean we have never been living with aliens such as in Star trek.) An intelligent robot who can make another one would perfectly deserve being called a life by his new criteria. Dr. Hawking was expressing his sorrow and disappointment about what has been done by human beings so far. I wish we can still hold some hope, since a part of us like him are aware and sorry for our own nature. |