This point in time is a particularly interesting one because the universe is still really mysterious but becoming less so by the day.  We know so much about the physical realm yet so little about certain aspects of life.

There was a time when people strapped wings to their backs, ran really fast off a cliff and flapped their arms in the hope to become the first person to fly.  Those people died.  If you were sick the doctor put leeches all over you.  Those people died too.  Today, flying on jets is commonplace and cheap, launching spaceships into the atmosphere is a daily occurrence and the physical processes of earth have been figured out into neat little formulas that are accurate and repeatable.  Biology and Chemistry have been largely figured out, if less so than physics.  Many mysteries of the world are gone, and with our knowledge of science we have made what once seemed impossible into commonplace activities.

I can study science but when I look at the synergistic nature of life I am still baffled.  We still dont really know what life “is”.  Undoubtedly one day we will have life figured out into neat little equations in the exact way that Newton helped us describe exactly how and why the apple fell from the tree and how Darwin helped us understand how we got here.  Just like we engineer planes to optimise nature’s equations one day we will be optimising the creation of life as well.  Eventually the “mystery” of life will be solved as the puzzle that it is and the wonder will be gone, replaced by equations.

We know for sure that humanity will one day have this knowledge but we do not know if that knowledge will come in our lifetime. Recently, an IBM computer has simulated 4.5% of the human brain, they claim it will have the capacity to simulate the entire brain by 2019.  Not long after that super computers will no doubt have a greater processing power than what fleshy brains could ever hope to achieve.  But not today, today us animals rule this world and the mystery of life continues.

I love a solved mystery.  I truly hope that I will be around long enough to see computers surpass humans' processing power and intelligence.  I’m not a parent but I see the pride parents have when their children make great steps forward in their growth, and I feel little tinges of that whenever I read articles that talk about 100ghz graphene processors.  One day it will be a quantum computer and if I’m around I would love to be hanging out with robots.  One day.