"Source Code" and "The Singularity is near" pics & extracts

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan as Colter Stevens and Christina in "Source Code" (2011), directed by Duncan Jones

Still of Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright in Source Code (2011)

Chapter Four: Achieving the Software of Human Intelligence: How to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain

"I estimate the compressed genome at about thirty to one hundred million bytes; this is smaller than the object code for Microsoft Word and much smaller than the source code".
"Wolfram goes on to describe how simple computational mechanisms can exist in nature at different levels, and he shows that these simple and deterministic mechanisms can produce all of the complexity that we see and experience. He makes the point that computation is essentially simple and ubiquitous. The repetitive application of simple computational transformations, according to Wolfram, is the true source of complexity in the world".
Information, Order, and Evolution: The Insights from Wolfram and Fredkin's Cellular Automata:

"We see information at every level of existence. Every form of human knowledge and artistic expression—scientific and engineering ideas and designs, literature, music, pictures, movies—can be expressed as digital information. Our brains also operate digitally, through discrete firings of our neurons. The wiring of our interneuronal connections can be digitally described, and the design of our brains is specified by a surprisingly small digital genetic code. Indeed, all of biology operates through linear sequences of 2-bit DNA base pairs, which in turn control the sequencing of only twenty amino acids in proteins. Within the atom, electrons take on discrete energy levels. Other subatomic particles, such as protons, comprise discrete numbers of valence quarks. In his book A New Kind of Science, Wolfram offers a comprehensive analysis of how the processes underlying a mathematical construction called "a cellular automaton" have the potential to describe every level of our natural world".

-extracts from "The Singularity is near" book by Raymond Kurzweil