Programming for the Pharoah

Just a story.

When I was a wizard for King Tut, he was having a big party for the Queen of the Nile and he wanted to have a light show and so I was asked to program a light show that would dazzle the visitors. I had all the resources of the Pharaoh so cash was not an issue. We built a large prism that split light into its colors and made mirrors and hanging tripods. From the tripods we hung long strips of papyrus with holes places strategically to combine the colors to synchronize with a dance.

The point is that programming and computers is not just about electrons and transistors, any process that is controlled by an automated method is a computer in some form. The first known computer to use punch cards ( other than my work for Tut) was the Jacquard loom. It was considered a step in computing as referenced here at wiki.

So the functions of the cell are a process that procedes like this , if it were a computer: DNA is "read" by RNA polymerase to make mRNA ( messenger RNA ). This is read by ribosomes and they translate it into sequences of amino acids, which are called proteins. The proteins would be the device interface and they act to control the cell, organism or even the external environment. Viruses "reprogram" cells all the time and nature is a programming guru at this. Reverse transcriptase can even take the RNA and create DNA that is inserted in the control sequence of a cell. It is possible and it is done in GMOs. There are many methods to achieve the insertion. Once a sequence has been inserted, it is inherited in single cell organisms. The IVF is essentially inserting half of the program of a viable cell. I see no difference ,in a mechanical sense, between this and operating a loom. The sociological implications are different and I am not considering them in this description.