The program’s deeper significance, of course, lies in its potential to transform viruses’ heretofore hacker-driven pseudo-evolution into something very like the real thing: a finely tuned interaction of variety and natural selection that allows the environment itself to shape the internal code of the organisms dwelling in it … Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms alone are just not mathematically fertile enough to have created and shaped life as we know it.
Predictor: Ludwig, Mark
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Julian Dibbell covers the concept that the study of computer viruses can lead to gains for networking and computing, interviewing Mark Ludwig, author of “The Little Black Book of Viruses” and publisher of Computer Virus Developments Quarterly. Dibbell writes: ”Curious hackers can find the Darwinian Genetic Mutation Engine’s complete source code in the pages of [Mark Ludwig’s sequel to ‘The Little Black Book,’] ‘Computer Viruses, Artificial Life, and Evolution,’ along with detailed experimental results demonstrating the ability of Darwinian Genetic Mutation Engine-enhanced viruses to run rings around existing scanners. But the program’s deeper significance, of course, lies in its potential to transform viruses’ heretofore hacker-driven pseudo-evolution into something very like the real thing: a finely tuned interaction of variety and natural selection that allows the environment itself to shape the internal code of the organisms dwelling in it. The Darwinian Genetic Mutation Engine is all Ludwig needs, in other words, to prove viruses capable of meaningful evolution, and incidentally, test Darwin’s theory. And it’s no surprise perhaps, given Ludwig’s hard-earned distrust of anything smacking of intellectual orthodoxy, that he has found that Darwin’s venerable theory fails the test. Running his beloved viruses through assorted experimental hoops and mazes, Ludwig followed them to the conclusion that Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms alone are just not mathematically fertile enough to have created and shaped life as we know it. This is a well-worn scientific heresy, of course, but it’s not without its small but respectable following within the ivory walls Ludwig so proudly dismisses. [Ludwig seeks] acknowledgment that this enduringly lifelike wonder could be useful if we but understood it, rather than the casting of it as the ultimate technological taboo. Ludwig managed a remarkable intellectual shift. He elevated the computer virus from the digital equivalent of a can of spray paint to an object capable of perhaps infinite variations and almost lifelike behavior. He transformed a tool of vandals into a field of scientific study by emphasizing a computer virus’ biological affinity.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Communication
Subtopic: Viruses/Worms
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Viruses Are Good For You: Spawn of the Devil, Computer Viruses May Help Us Realize the Full Potential of the Net
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.02/viruses_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney