The Original Computer Was Not Made of Silicon
3.8 Billion Years of Computing History The first general purpose computer most of us learn about is the ENIAC, built in 1945, weighing 30 tons, consuming 150 kilowatts of power, capable of performing 5000 arithmetic operations per second. But ENIAC was not the first computer. The first was invented roughly 3.8 billion years earlier, in an anoxic pool of prebiotic water. It weighed less than a nanogram. It ran on sugar. And it was so well designed that every single living thing on Earth is still running variations of its architecture today. We call it a cell. It Is Not an Analogy. It Is a Literal Description Most people treat the "cell as a computer" as a cute, imperfect analogy. It is not an analogy. It is a literal description, if you use the actual definition of what a computer is. A computer is not a slab of silicon and copper. It is any programmable system that takes input, stores information, processes that information according to encoded rules, and produces output to a...
