Page 100 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism

Once Upon a Time
There Was Darwinism

Most of those watching The Matrix Reloaded
were unaware that all the bodies in the real world are
actually, in a sense, very complex pieces of software.

If you wanted to transpose its information to paper, you
would have to build a library large enough to cover whole walls of
a big room. If you compared it to other computer operating sys-
tems like Windows or Mac OS, you would see that your "soft-
ware" is incomparably more complex and superior. Besides, the
operating system in your computer often shuts down or freezes
and you have to restart it. It even crashes, so that you lose all your

information. However, nothing happens to your body's software
as long as you are alive. If there is an error in this software, an-
other part of the program corrects it and eliminates the problem.
But the software in your body is not composed of green digi-
tal numbers and letters as in The Matrix Reloaded, but is made up of
molecules—parts of a gigantic chain of molecules called DNA in
the nucleus of each cell of the trillions that comprise your body.
Your DNA data bank contains all of your body's characteris-
tics. This gigantic molecule is composed of a series of four differ-

ent chemical units called bases. Like a four-letter alphabet, these
bases store the information about all the organic molecules that
will construct your body. That is, these chemical building blocks
are not arranged randomly, but according to particular informa-
tion, divided into "sentences" and "paragraphs" that scientists call
genes. Each gene describes various details of your body—for
example, the structure of your eye's transparent cornea,

or the formula of the insulin hormone that lets your
cells make use of the sugar you eat.

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