Symbiotic Information Processing and Technological Progress

Abstract

The goal of the paper is the introduction and exploration of new types of information processing. Starting with the typology developed in such an important class of information processing as computation, we extend this typology by analyzing information representations used in computational processes and delineating novel forms of information representations. While the traditional approach deals only with two dimensions of information processing—symbolic and sub-symbolic, our analysis explicated one more dimension—super-symbolic information processing. Information processing in biological systems is both symbolic and sub-symbolic, having the form of genes and neural networks. Nevertheless, in their evolution, biological systems have advanced their abilities one step further by developing super-symbolic information processing and evolving symbiotic information processing that performs information processing on the combined knowledge in the brain from both symbolic, subsymbolic, and super-symbolic information processing to derive higher order autopoietic and cognitive behaviors. Performing all forms of information processing, biological systems achieve much higher cognitive and intelligence level. That is why here we also consider a new type of computing automata called structural machines with the goal of transferring these advantageous features of biological systems to the existing information processing technology.