So let us just remind ourselves of the objective of the Digital Human. It is to create a complete digital facsimile of a real living human. The vision I have is that you can zoom in on this digital copy going right down to the atomic level. This applies to every single component that makes up the living human. But importantly you can allow this digital human to live and therefore change with you being able to witness all these changes digitally. This includes all the things that move within the human body (eg blood, hormones etc) along with all the things that are resident within the body. (eg viruses, bacteria etc). Change includes the growth and decay phases of living and finally to death. All this to be digitally defined. From the first cells growing after conception to the final death of all the cells marking the end of that life.
You will be able to have different “lens” over this living digital
human. The visual lens showing all the components the same way you would see
them under a microscope and down to what you would see through an electron
microscope. Another “lens” would allow you to see the human body from a purely
chemical perspective. The same atoms that you can see visually but with them
chemically identified. Then what I have termed the wireless “lens” where you
can view everything on either side of the visual spectrum. Wireless is too simpler
a term to use but because it is so easily understood it is the term we will use
generically. But it covers a huge spectrum with the true wireless band only
forming part of this wide spectrum. This covers a huge spectrum of impulses
that run across space ranging from ultra violet through to visible light (to
us) to infrared to the electric and to wireless wave bands. In addition the all
the mysterious wave forms in between these defined bands. You do have to
appreciate the concepts of consilience to appreciate that these “wireless”
entities do form part of us as living organisms. Although scientifically they
remain very unexplored and researched parts of biology. There will be the
sceptics who claim these areas as being nonsense believing it to belong to
pseudoscientific or occult thinking. But there are so many amazing feats in
nature not fully explained that it is important to keep an open mind. Sitting
her with my laptop connected via WiFi to a web server sited in California instantly
communicating information would have been viewed as witchcraft in the 17th
Century. Let along face timing someone sitting on an aeroplane flying over the Canadian
snow covered wastelands. What will be our capabilities in 2120?
So back to
basics. So whilst I can visualise this real living human I am struggling to
understand how we are going to define the digital human digitally. It is going
to be a visual thing. But it is also going to be a data thing in support of the
visualisation. So I can see the outputs from CT scanners and electron
microscopes giving me loads of visual material. I can see loads of chemical
analysis giving me the chemical “lens” on these visual. I can even see the
wireless “lens” superimposed on the visual and chemical “lenses”. But I want to
get to the digital code. Will digital be enough? Will need something more
quantum to get to the final mathematical definition of life. So the search
starts of this mathematical (code) “lens” on human life. But it is not just
human it is life itself.
In 2020 my
digital searching for existing “digital resources” to support my digital
objectives has lacked any real structure. In truth I don’t see anyone pulling
it all together the way I envisage it needs pulling together. But then I am retired
Information Analyst really a product of the commercial computer world just now
dabbling into the life sciences. I don’t even know where to start looking to support
my mental adventure. So not surprisingly I started with Wikipedia. I started to
look up human genes on Wikipedia and was impressed to find that this “open
systems” approach to knowledge gathering had started the process in respect of
these genes in 2007. You suddenly realise you are not alone in this world. In
fact thousands are just thinking like me and you if you are reading these words.
So Wikipedia became
a key source of knowledge in support of building up the digital resources in
respect of the Digital Human. But it obviously fails to map it all together in
a structured way rather being designed to support you dipping in and out
looking up facts. The links then supporting you searching linked facts allowing
you to grow your understanding. But not in a zoom and out way. The search than
started at looking at information stored within the biological research organisations.
The research papers and the research databases. Unless I am completely missing
something this is very fragmented. National boundaries come into play along
with government establishments, research establishments, universities, commercial
organisations and publishing organisations.
The one
digital resource that I particularly focused upon was produced by the US
National Library of Medicine and the National Center for Biotechnology
Information. This is a truly amazing resource. You could search on 40 plus major
information entities. It is also very information technology user friendly.
Future blogs will investigate these information entities further but for now
just consider one of these entities PubMed.
PubMed is a
free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life
sciences literature with the aim of improving health – both globally and
personally.
The PubMed
database contains more than 30 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature.
PubMed has
been available to the public online since 1996.It was developed and is
maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the
U.S National Library of Medicine (NLM),located at the National Institutes of
Health (NIH.).
In 2020 alone
100,000 articles alone were added on Covid-19.
For now I
will just include the link below so you can take a look at this huge digital resource.
In terms of me looking to build my Digital Human this at present appears to be
the most comprehensive freely available resource. The plan in 2021 is for this
Digital Human blog to try and map some of these resources into my overall
Digital Human digitised map.
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