The Science of Computing - A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java - page 221

- Universal content representation: binary strings.
- Universal rendering device: the computer.
- Generic (universal) algorithms.
- Universal binary base representation.
Figure 10.2 Once the content is available as a binary string we can apply
generic algorithms such as copying, compressing, transmitting or archiving it
without having to know, say, that it is a music or book string
10.2 Nature of computing?
Defining computing, finding its limitations and pondering whether nature is
doing computing of some sort are puzzling questions. In 1953, James Watson
and Francis Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA that encodes
genes. They received the Nobel Prize for this spectacular discovery. The
mechanism of DNA replication is well understood nowadays, and it is striking to
see that in genetics, DNA sequences are copied, transmitted and archived using
the same process carried out by the ribosome units. Historically speaking, it
was first envisioned by Erwin Schroedinger 1 in his remarkable essay “What
is life?” [5] published in 1944 that there should exist some “crystal” for
transmitting information from cells to cells. This “crystal” revealed itself a
decade late r as the DNA.
1 Another winner of the Nobel prize in 1933.