AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
OK, I did not like the overall approach of this book. For what I suppose are fairly idiosyncratic reasons. The opening is all about scoffing at those naive geneticists and others who thought that live was mechanical or could be usefully described in mechanical metaphors.
Of course, this is complete bullshit. Mechanical metaphors are very useful and productive, even if they (of course) also have their limitations. He hedges his attack with by acknowledging this. So what is he going on about? Live is complicated, how does he propose we understand it if not as machines?
DNA is not quite the Master of Everything that some people thought, but it is still damn important.
Like most non-programmers, he doesn't have any kind of real understanding of what "machine" means.
Man that sounds snotty. But I actually think this. Say one thing for the Rationalists, they don't have this problem (their flaws like in not understanding the human)