The Edge of Computation

OK, enough opinionated posts and moaning about my poor state of health - on to an interesting link or two.

Edge is a web and print publication produced by the Edge Foundation, whose "informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world". Their Febuary issue has the transcript of a pretty good panel discussion between Craig Venter, Ray Kurzweil and Rodney Brooks on the subject of biocomputation.

Everybody probably knows about Craig Venter already. Rodney Brooks is the director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is probably best known for his insect robots based on the idea that complex, lifelike behaviour can arise from lots of simple programmed behaviours working together. Ray Kurzweil is another comp sci celebrity; probably more famous as an entrepreneur than an academic now, though.

It's a long read but also one that covers a lot of ground. The three participants have some interesting opinions about how biocomputing is changing the way we look at the natural world; Kurzweil in particular seems adamant that we'll be able to model everything from cells up to the human brain in relatively short order while Rodney Brooks is more careful: he believes that we're still missing the "essence of life" - an understanding of biology from first principles - without which our efforts at replicating the complexity of life will always be unsuccessful. Craig Venter talks a little bit about high-throughput genomics - as it relates to his genome mining trips on the high seas and to cheap DNA sequencing - amongst other things.

There's some Quicktime video of the talk available too.