INTRODUCTION: GENES AND KNOWLEDGE

1. Of all substances on earth, only DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information, can orchestrate its own replication.

2. Every organism that has ever lived on this planet is a product of information recorded in its own particular version of the DNA molecule.

3. DNA replication happens billions of times every second, all over the earth, wherever there is life. No thoughtful intervention is required. Self-copying just happens.

4. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, better known as entropy, says that order tends to give way to disorder. The only way to maintain any order is by recycling disorganized components into organized arrangements. DNA and DNA alone manages to buck the universal trend toward disorder.

5. As living beings, we tend to think of ourselves as the end purpose of all the biological activity that sustains us. We humans are merely biochemical vehicles through which DNA maintains its immortality. The only enduring order is found in life's information.

6. Just being able to encode information on a reindeer antler or a cave wall is not good enough. Unless many copies are produced, entropy will ensure the eventual loss or destruction of the information.

7. Of the thousands of cuneiform tablets found, 99 percent are economic texts. The Sumerians were not writing for us. They applied their breakthroughs in information technology to the problems that yielded the greatest immediate benefit.

8. Whether the medium was clay, papyrus, parchment, or paper, the physical process of copying was the same. A scribe, one of the few people in the society trained to read and write, had to hand-copy from an original text.

9. It is impossible to overstate the significance of Gutenberg's invention. Simply put, without printing, the Scientific Revolution at the turn of the seventeenth century could not have started.

10. What we are now experiencing is not the Information Explosion. It is only the most recent example of a process that has occurred again and again.
    • The first Information Explosion came with the original encoding of human knowledge - the cave paintings and bone scratching.

    • The second started in Sumer with the improvement of writing techniques.

    • The third was triggered by Gutenberg's press.

    • The fourth was the Scientific Revolution

    • The fifth was the Industrial Revolution

    • We are in the process of the sixth from the wake of the invention of the microprocessor.