For most of history, humans lived in small groups. Then, almost overnight in evolutionary terms, billions of us began cooperating in vast, complex societies, something unmatched in the animal kingdom. How did this happen? Professor Magnus S. Magnusson of the University of Iceland believes the answer lies in an unexpected place: inside our cells. His research shows striking parallels between the way that DNA segments (called genes), form specialized proteins, and the way that text segments, called curricula, form specialized individuals. Read More
Beginning in the early 1980s, Magnusson developed a hierarchical pattern type, called T-patterns, along with special algorithms and software, called THEME, for their detection. T-patterns are recurring one-dimensional sequential patterns, detected with THEME in everything from children’s play to brain activity, and from text to our DNA. Magnusson’s analysis revealed deep organisational principles that are common to both proteins and modern human societies.
Magnusson highlights two great transitions in evolution and history that hinge on separating information storage from active work: billions of years ago, when DNA became life’s memory bank, and just 5,000 years ago, when writing created memory outside the brain. Previously, RNA and humans stored information without a centralized information store. The development of DNA and writing changed this.
Until relatively recently, writing and literacy were confined to a small elite, but through widespread education, text allowed humans (like proteins) to build what Magnusson calls ‘T-societies’ – social systems organised around vast stores of knowledge, or the so-called ‘textome’.
Like specialized proteins are formed by DNA segments (or genes), humans are specialised by text segments (or curricula) for countless roles or tasks.
More recently, Magnusson has shown that this similarity between human and intracellular organisation is not just a metaphor, but a turning point in natural history. But the speed of this transformation is striking. As is now often said about many modern phenomena, it appears to have changed everything, with humans suddenly pulling far ahead of all other life forms in countless ways.
His latest analyses suggest that modern human societies, which have been structured around written knowledge and mass specialization (education) for only about two centuries, represent a wholly new and unique form of animal social organisation. Just as the transition from RNA to DNA revolutionised life, this sudden appearance of text-based and mass-specialisation-based T-societies marks a unique evolutionary leap, one that may still be unfolding.
The implications are profound. Unlike ant colonies and all non-human and earlier human societies, only modern human T-societies can now scale to billions of individuals with unprecedented complexity and abilities. But this also brings vulnerabilities: just as viruses hijack DNA, harmful information can spread through our collective text-based memory, where misinformation may cost lives.
Magnusson’s work suggests that understanding these recent parallels with cells could illuminate both humanity’s sudden rapid progress and its greatest risks. AI and robots now also have access to the textome and the new ‘digitome’, which is digital information based on T-patterns. Just as DNA transformed life, our evolving ways of storing and transmitting information may mark the beginning of entirely new forms of evolution.
