Darwin Turing Dawkins: Building a General Theory of Evolution
This work aims to provide a foundational theory for understanding evolution across diverse systems, including biology, culture, and technology, but it appears incremental by building on existing ideas from Darwin, Turing, and Dawkins.
The paper tackles the problem of extending evolutionary theory beyond biology to encompass memes and digital information, proposing a general theory of evolution. It suggests this framework can explain human behavior and technological trends, though no concrete results or numbers are provided.
Living things, computers, societies, and even books are part of a grand evolutionary struggle to survive. That struggle shapes nature, nations, religions, art, science, and you. What you think, feel, and do is determined by it. Darwinian evolution does not apply solely to the genes that are stored in DNA. Using the insights of Alan Turing and Richard Dawkins, we will see that it also applies to the memes we store in our brains and the information we store in our computers. The next time you run for president, fight a war, or just deal with the ordinary problems humans are heir to, perhaps this book will be of use. If you want to understand why and when you will die, or if you want to achieve greatness this book may help. If you are concerned about where the computer revolution is headed, this book may provide some answers.