This Animal’s Behavior Is Mechanically Programmed – This conceit underlies the current version of the model, that all interactions in cells are essentially mechanical, and complexification of those interactions scale up to organisms like humans or blue whales. This article is particularly interesting because I hadn’t actually come across a multicellular organism without some type of information system specialization (even though such a thing had to exist).
[Edit]I guess I buried the lede a bit on this one – As far as I know, this is the first model which accurately predicts the behavior of a multicellular animal. No current model, no matter how simple the animal, has been able to accomplish this, even with only a few hundred neurons to work against. And it does so without needing any discrete magic.[/Edit]
The Thoughts of a Spiderweb – This article makes me think of a lot questions about the “nature” of technology as a whole. This biological/genetic technology for offloading information external to the organism is probably every bit as profound as any human technology which does the same, if scaled for information system capacity. It suggests that the drive to externalize information is likely a genetic behavioral mechanic, rather than some type of divine inspiration or artifact of cognitive complexity.