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Believe it or not , the Internet was n’t incisively a human design . The World ’s First Internet was create by microbes , the flyspeck organisms that are responsible for all aliveness on Earth . Before man were even snug to live , microbes were hard at piece of work creating their very own cyberspace of Things — and today , our very own World Wide Web is built around their manikin .
The following is an excerpt fromBiocivilisations : A New Look at the Science of Lifeby Dr. Predrag Slijepčević . It has been adapted for the World Wide Web .
The World’s First Internet
Creating a huge world-wide meshing connecting billions of someone might be one of humanity ’s bang-up achievements , but microbe beat us to it by more than three billion age . These tiny single - cellular telephone organism are n’t just responsible for for all life-time on Earth , they also have their own translation of the World Wide Web and the Internet of Things . Here ’s how it work .
Much like our own cells , germ address pieces of DNA as coded messages . These messages contain info for gather proteins into molecular machines that can resolve specific problems , such as repairing the cell . But microbes do n’t just get these messages from their own DNA.They also unsay pieces of deoxyribonucleic acid from their dead relatives or convert them with living mates . These deoxyribonucleic acid pieces are then incorporated into their genome , which are like computers overseeing the work of the entire protein machinery . In this room , the tiny bug is a flexible get word machine that intelligently look for resource in its environment . If one protein machine does n’t exercise , the bug tries another one . Problems are solved through trial and erroneous belief .
Original Societies: Microbe Colonies
But microbe are too modest to act on their own . Instead , they form societies . bug have been living as jumbo settlement , containing jillion of appendage , since the dawn of living on Earth . These colonies have even left behind mineral structures get laid as stromatolites . These are microbic metropolises , immobilize in time like Pompeii , that provide evidence of life from billion of years ago . microbic colony are invariably learning and adapting . They emerged in the oceans and step by step inhibit the earth – and at the heart of their geographic expedition strategy was selective information exchange . As we ’ve seen , private members communicate by exchange chemical messages in a extremely coordinated way . In this means , microbial bon ton efficaciously constructs a collective ‘ psyche ’ . This mind directs part of software system , save in DNA code , back and off between trillion of microbes with a undivided aim : to amply research the local environment for resource . When resources are eat in one place , microbial expedition strength advance to ascertain new terra firma of plenty . They transmit their breakthrough back to base using dissimilar variety of chemical signal , direct microbic beau monde to transmute from settlers to colonisers . In this mode , microbes eventually conquered the satellite , create a global microbial net that resembles the World Wide Web , but using biochemical signals instead of electronic - digital ones . In theory , a signal emitted by bacteria in waters around the South Pole could travel almost instantaneously to bacterium in the waters around the North Pole .
Using Microbes to Advance Technology
The law of similarity to human engineering do n’t check there . scientist and engine driver are now mold on expanding our own information mesh into the Internet of Things , integrating all manner of devices by equip them with micro chip to smell out and communicate . Your electric refrigerator will be able to alarm you when it is out of milk . Your mansion will be able to narrate you when it is being burgled . But microbes build their version of the Internet of thing a long time ago . We can call it the Internet of Living Things , better known as the biosphere . Every being on the planet is link up in this complex net that depends on bug for its endurance . More than a billion years ago , one microbe get hold its way inside another microbe that became its horde . These two microbes became a symbiotic hybrid known as the eukaryotic cell , the basis for most of the life form we are familiar with today . All plants and animal are descended from this microbial amalgamation and so they contain the biological ‘ plug - in ’ software that connects them to the Internet of Living Things .
For example , humans are contrive in a way that entail we can not function without the trillions of bug inside our body ( our microbiome ) that help us do thing like digest food for thought and get immunity to germs . We are so overwhelmed by bug that we imprint personal microbic signatures on every surface we touch on .
The Internet of Living Things is a neat and beautifully serve scheme . plant and animals live on the ecological waste product created by microbes , while to microbes all plants and animals are , as author Howard Bloom puts it , ‘ mere cattle on whose flesh they dine ’ , whose bodies will be brook and reprocess one day .

germ are even potential cosmic tourists . If human jaunt into deep space , our bug will travel with us . The Internet of Living Things may have a long cosmic scope . The paradox is that we still perceive bug as inferior organisms . The realness is that microbes are the invisible and intelligent ruler of the biosphere . Their global biomass exceeds our own . They are the original inventors of the information - based social club . Our internet is merely a by - product of the microbial information game initiated three billion long time ago.29
Notes
29 . Predrag Slijepčević , ‘ Micobes have their own version of the internet , ’ The Conversation ( 29 December 2024 ) , https://theconversation.com/microbes-have-their-own-version-of-the-internet-75642 .
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