Some people confess guilt to claim credit for the sin. - John von Neumann

The very last stage of any memory hierarchy is necessarily the outside world — that is, the outside world as far as the machine is concerned, i.e. that part of it with which the machine can directly communicate, in other words, the input and the output organs of the machine. These are usually punched paper tapes or cards, and on the output side, of course, also printed paper.

For progress there is no cure.

Furthermore, it's equally evident that what goes on is actually one degree better than self-reproduction, for organisms appear to have gotten more elaborate in the course of time. Today's organisms are phylogenetically descended from others which were vastly simpler than they are, so much simpler, in fact, that it's inconceivable, how any kind of description of the latter, complex organism could have existed in the earlier one. It's not easy to imagine in what sense a gene, which is probably a low order affair, can contain a description of the human being which will come from it. But in this case you can say that since the gene has its effect only within another human organism, it probably need not contain a complete description of what is to happen, but only a few cues for a few alternatives. However, this is not so in phylogenetic evolution. That starts from simple entities, surrounded by an unliving amorphous milieu, and produce, something more complicated. Evidently, these organisms have the ability to produce something more complicated than themselves.