I have not proved that the universe is, in fact, a digital computer and that it's capable of performing universal computation, but it's plausible that it is.

Some folks think life and technology and mind can keep expanding forever. Others say it can't. We are still not clear on that.

Indeed, as the above calculation indicates, to take full advantage of the memory space available, the ultimate laptop must turn all its matter into energy.

Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.

Another feature that everybody notices about the universe is that it's complex.

For hundreds of millions of years, Sex was the most efficient method for propagating information of dubious provenance: the origins of all those snippets of junk DNA are lost in the sands of reproductive history. Move aside, Sex: the world-wide Web has usurped your role.

By separating the function of adaptation from the function of maintaining the integrity of individual genes, sex allows much greater diversity while still keeping genes whole. Sex is not only fun, it is good engineering practice.