The article discusses the concept of life as a process of using and transferring information, in addition to traditional biological functions like reproduction and metabolism. It presents a recent paper estimating the total amount of information transferred per second by all life on Earth and compares it to similar estimates for all technology on Earth.

The study suggests that currently, life moves a billion times more information per second than the biosphere. They suggest that this trend might change by the beginning of the 22nd century, with technology potentially surpassing life in information transfer. The article then asks an important question: What will this shift mean for the evolution of humanity and the planet?

Editor’s Note: We think that more than the number of information being transmitted, when it comes to life, the quality of “interconnections” between the pathways are more important.

For example, with the completion of the sequencing of the human genome, scientists are claiming that we now have the “complete set of instructions required to create a human being”. But the question is, are our genes the only thing that makes us human? How much role do experiences have in shaping who we are as individuals?