Pulse: The Coming Age Of Systems And Machines Inspired By Living Things
Robert Frenay

Little, Brown Book Group
Price: Rs 595/-

“Soon to come are computers with emotions, ships that learn from fish, and soft jets that flex and twist like swooping birds. These are not blue-sky dreams. Work on them is well-advanced.”

‘i.t.’ score: 80%

The cyborg—that mythical blend of silicon and living tissue—is going to be here faster than you think. We will no longer see nature lovers and technologists at odds with each other, as the border between these two realms gradually fades and the twain meet. In Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things, Robert Frenay predicts that the future will see a ‘new biology’ in which technologies will not only be inspired by nature, but also merge into it; where today’s machine age culture will be replaced by a totally organic one.

This is not a distant dream. As computers allow us to delve deeper into how nature works, so as to build human systems and living technologies that can cope with complexity and the challenges of intelligence on their own, this age of the new biology is very close indeed. And even cynics will be hard pressed to deny this after reading about robofish that ‘teach’ ships the natural tricks of propulsion. Or about the US military having developed battle armour based on insects’ carapaces, and bioskins being ‘grown’ to filter biological-warfare agents and to serve as self-repairing surfaces for space probes. Then there’s Eliza, the ‘intelligent’ computer program that could keep up a conversation by asking questions framed by inverting phrases and adding prefixes to an earlier statement!

There is also Lego’s Mindstorm series that helps kids to not only build machines but also develop new behaviour patterns—becoming ‘new biology toys.’

But what takes the cake is how a team at UC San Diego connected lobster neurons to a circuit they’d made using $ 7.50 worth of parts, proving that living cells and electronic circuits could work together smoothly as a single unit!

When Frenay starts a chapter, talking about the complex human landscape at the Santa Fe plateaus, or the opposing cultures that fail to interact in the city of Manaus, situated at the meeting ground of the Rio Negro and the Solimões rivers that come together to form the Amazon, or about some amazing species of underwater life, techies might wonder why they are reading about biology and evolution rather than about the many geeky things on this planet. But the way Frenay writes of nature is so enthralling that you can’t stop reading, which pays off as he starts weaving the magic thread that connects all this information to technology—today’s, tomorrow’s or the day after tomorrow’s.

Frenay has brilliantly brought together proof of the arrival of the new biology in this book. As he admits in the introduction, he is not saying anything new; he has merely positioned the many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in the right places, giving us a glimpse of the future where technology and nature will blend.

It might not happen tomorrow, but be prepared for the cyborg!