Virus

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From our perspective a virus applies to all three realms- biology, computer, and mind.

Self-replicating copies of anything- tangible and/or abstract are possible in three primary realms or universes.

Type 1 (Biological) Virus: These self replicate in physical biological organisms and systems- people, plants and animals.

Type 2 (Computer Virus): A computer virus is designed by a vandal programmer to copy and replicate itself (and execute instructions)that are usually destructive from the perspective of the user. Also see Computer Virus.

Type 3 Mind Virus: Our minds excel both at copying information and at following instructions. Mind viruses replicate in the mind and alter human and/or animal behavior in a myriad of ways.


Let us begin by looking at the workings of biological viruses.

Long ago, possibly billions of years ago, there arose through evolution a new type of organism- if it can even be called an organism. The thing had the unusual property that it could invade the reproductive facilities of other organisms and put them to use making copies of itself. We call this a virus.

It is difficult to talk about viruses without talking about copying.

That is what a virus does, after all: it makes copies of itself. What is emotionally interesting about this is that a virus uses "us" as its laboratory for making copies of itself. Frequently it will leave behind a mess after doing so.

A virus is more than a parasite. It is more than an infiltrator, more than an unchecked self-copier. A virus is all of these at the same time.

A virus is anything that takes external copying equipment and puts it to work making copies of itself.

One reason to take viruses seriously is that making copies of yourself- self replicating- is the most powerful force in the Universe. (If you had the thought that perhaps God is he most powerful force in the universe-remember: some say He created us in His own image, Self-replication). Where there was once 1, now there are 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 . . . Growth by doubling is called exponetial growth, and it works very quickly to fill up whatever space is available. An atomic bomb works that way: One fissioned atom causes others to split, which in turn cause more atoms to split, all releasing energy. When the space available inside the bomb is filled- kaboom!

In the case of a typical biological virus, the copying equipment it commandeers is in the cells of the organism being attacked. Cells use that equipment in the normal course of their affairs to manufacture proteins, duplicate nucleic acids, and prepare to divide in two. The virus infiltrates the cell and fools the copying equipment into copying the virus in addition to, or instead of, its usual work-load. You may conjure the image of a syringe-like virus poking its needle into a cell and injecting its own genetic program so the cell machinery starts going to work producing more syringes. There is some artistic license in this image, but it can help you get the idea.

Anywhere there is a copying machine, there can be viruses. Modern computer networks, designed specifically to copy and transmit data, were a natural target for malicious or mischievous hackers to create man-made viruses, which is to be expected since computers are designed especially to minimize mutations, or corruption of data.

Since humans designed computers with the express intention of making them easy for us to program, it's not too surprising that we've found it easy to create viruses that exist in that medium more easily than we have found it to engineer any kind of DNA based organism.

A virus does not change the way in which DNA gets copied; a virus inserts new information to be copied along with, or instead of, the rest. What happens, then, to the cell containing that new information is one or more of three possibilities.

1. The information may be unintelligible to the rest of the cell and have minimal effect on its workings other than perhaps to decrease its efficiency at all the other work it has to do.

2. The information may confuse r sabotage the workings of the cell and cause it to malfunction, at least from some point of view. (From the virus's point of view, the new functioning may be fine.)

3. The information may improve the cell's functioning by giving it some kind of new ability or defense mechanism.

A virus takes advantage of the fact that the copying mechanism doesn't have a good screening system to ensure that it is only copying approved data.

A virus's mission is to make as many copies of itself as possible.

The universe contains many mechanisms for copying and dispersing information, and viruses are some of the things that are often copied and dispersed.

For more information on the many aspects of a virus, please read Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie, the Microsoft Programmer who designed the Word application.

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