SNS: The Perfect Union: Biology And Computing

SNS Subscriber Edition
Volume 18, Issue 24
Week of June 22, 2015
 
In This Issue

Feature: The Perfect Union: Biology And Computing

• The Perfect Venn Intersection
• What Is Biology?
• What Is Evolution?
• Computers Applied to Biology
• Making Biology with Computers
• Using Biology to Make Computers

Quotes Of The Week

Takeout Window

• 3D Printing Human Skin
• You Have It Backwards, Ginny: Chinese Firms Need You
• MSFT Brings 1st Chinese University into the US; Target: University of Washington
• Neural Lace: No Longer Just Science Fiction

Upgrades And Numbers

• Grexit
• The Pope Effect
• The OPM Hack
• China Whistles, US Tech Firms Fetch

Ethermail

—-

I was talking with my friend and colleague Larry Smarr the other day, and we found ourselves discussing the ways in which biology is today informing computer design. We started listing all the ways in which biology does things better than the old von Neumann computer structures of today, and the more we talked, the more absurdly huge these differences loomed. After a while, we just couldn’t stop laughing —

There is no comparison; biology is infinitely better at what computers do than today’s computers.

In this week’s discussion, we’re going to look at how biology will inform computer design – and how compute systems will change biology.