LIFE FORMS

LIFE FORMS

By 

Brij Sachdeva 

There are two fundamental characteristics required for something to be called a form of life.

1 It can do something for itself to survive.

2 It can produce more of its kind.

Stephen William Hawking, a cosmologist, theoretical physicist and author, has said that computer viruses should be treated as a life form. Although it lacks other typical characteristics of living beings, it fits this definition of a life form. It infects a computer, becomes a parasite, replicates and spreads from one computer to another computer.

A life form is nothing but a piece of planet accumulated over some time. Our body is also a piece of earth accumulated over some time through the food that we eat. Similarly, our mind is also an accumulation of thoughts.

But the question is, who is accumulating? Some memory system records every information and remember all the information with such phenomenal integrity that the question is bound to arise ‘What is the force behind this Process of life’. All the religions and philosophies of the whole human history revolve around this fundamental question" Who am I?" 

There is something called consciousness, that is accumulating matter in living beings. Consciousness is everywhere. From a blade of grass to the largest star; from a small photon to a supernova; from spinning electrons to spinning galaxies, everything is a play of consciousness or whatever you may call it.

If we stop a while and try to visualize what it is, that nature is destined for, the only conclusion we can arrive at is that it seems to be an endless phenomenon.

Maybe, a day will come when robots will become so sophisticated that they will transform into a new kind of life form. Then ‘ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE’ may play the role of the brain. We may call it ‘the collective brain’ or the collective human intelligence. Then there will be no need for this kind of brain. The cerebral cortex May shrink because it has to follow instructions only. Robots will be manufacturing, installing and repairing one another. Or human beings may face extinction like dinosaurs and new life forms, more evolved, more significant, may happen to come into existence.

There is every possibility that the life forms we know are just rudimentary and that nature is destined towards something that we don't know anything about at all.