Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!njin!princeton!udel!udccvax1!ray
From: ray@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Thomas Ray)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted
Subject: Computer Virus Literature
Keywords: life
Message-ID: <2594@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU>
Date: 23 Dec 88 14:05:52 GMT
Reply-To: ray@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Thomas Ray)
Followup-To: Childers
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Delaware
Lines: 24


     The environment that biological organisms live in is dead, like
the computer.  The organisms may none-the-less be alive, whether
their code is DNA or machine code.  It is not the environment
that is alive, but the organism.  Computer viruses may be alive even
if the computer is dead.

     Computer programs that reproduce may technically fit the simple
definition of life, "anything that reproduces", but they are not
biologically interesting unless they can adapt to their environment,
that is, evolve.  This would require self mutation, or the incorporation
of code from the environment, tested by the process of natural
selection (anything else I haven't thought of?).

Richard Childers:
     I tried to post to you by e-mail, but it didn't get through.
You seem to know something about the subject, could you send
me literature citations?  You state: "Oh, I dare say a few
colleges have done experimental research on the topic".  What were
the results of their experiments?  Have they been published?

                                  Tom Ray
        Life & Health Sciences - Univ. of Delaware - Newark, DE  19716
                                302-451-2753