Stranded Technologies Podcast · Infinita City

Ep. 97: Dr. Michael Levin on Bioelectricity, Anthrobots, and the Software of Life

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Levin says planaria can be rewritten from "one head one tail" into two-headed animals without changing the genome.

The host opens day three of the Human Enhancement Conference by introducing Michael Levin as a major figure in longevity and bioelectricity. Levin thanks the audience and identifies himself as the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts, as well as a developmental and regenerative biologist. He says he wants to talk about the plasticity and potential for learning to engineer the agential material of life. From there, he names the field's destination. He calls it the anatomical compiler. In that framing, a person should someday be able to sit down at a computer and draw the plant, animal, organ, or biobot they want at the level of anatomy. The system would then compile that description into a set of stimuli for cells. Those cells would build the requested structure. Levin uses a three-headed flatworm as the concrete example of that logic. The conversation then shifts into a question about whether genes are really the instruction set that determines bodily form. The interviewer asks whether ion channels, such as potassium channels, might be the relevant control layer. Levin answers by reaching for the hardware-and-software analogy. He says the reductionist view is not exactly false. Ion channels and other molecular machinery are absolutely necessary. Genes make sure each cell has the hardware it needs to do various things. But the more important question is which paradigm gives the best prediction and control. He compares the situation to hiring a coder who insists everything is really just Maxwell's equations. That frame may be physically true, but it is not usually the most efficient level for making change. He promises examples that show why the genetic level is not always the optimum level of control. The talk keeps widening and narrowing around that point. It moves from abstract theory back to concrete biology and then back out again to first principles. By the close, Levin uses cancer as the sharpest example of the same idea. In his framing, those cells have rejected the collective memories of the collective in terms of building organs and struck out on their own in a much smaller cognitive lichen. The result is a discussion where philosophy, development, and medicine keep feeding into one another.

As heard by us

Bioelectricity, framed as a control problem for building life.

Michael Levin presents biology as something that can be programmed, not just observed. The anatomical compiler idea gives the talk its sharpest edge: if a person can describe the plant, animal, organ, or biobot they want, what layer of control should translate that intent into…

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If you want biology treated like an engineering stack, start here.

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