You're quite right really. The codestrings I'm proposing would only be the equivalent of chemical processes, not really actually even life. There are a number of logical limitations that (realistically) would keep it from working in the real world.
The biggest problem is the OS itself. Computers are linear or very close to it. You can only launch so many apps or spawn so many threads/children before the system just flat out tells you 'NO'. The only way it might work is through propagation on a large network (such as the internet) so that these limitations wouldn't halt your evolution too much, but compared to the resources of the Earth and the size of single-celled organisms, even the internet is an extremely finite amount of space and it's a much more actively hostile environment than the Earth. Survival alone, let alone advancement are pretty long odds.
It's a fun concept though, and if you had 'the perfect storm' it _might_ work, but as FF00FF mentioned, what you'd end up with probably wouldn't be very friendly or useful to us. It sure would be neat though. :)
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-21 11:58 pm (UTC)The biggest problem is the OS itself. Computers are linear or very close to it. You can only launch so many apps or spawn so many threads/children before the system just flat out tells you 'NO'. The only way it might work is through propagation on a large network (such as the internet) so that these limitations wouldn't halt your evolution too much, but compared to the resources of the Earth and the size of single-celled organisms, even the internet is an extremely finite amount of space and it's a much more actively hostile environment than the Earth. Survival alone, let alone advancement are pretty long odds.
It's a fun concept though, and if you had 'the perfect storm' it _might_ work, but as FF00FF mentioned, what you'd end up with probably wouldn't be very friendly or useful to us. It sure would be neat though. :)