The Really Big Picture.

Those of us who tend to focus on minute details are often surprised by how different something looks when seen from a broader perspective. This was certainly the case for me at the recent Siggraph conference in Los Angeles. My initial reaction, and one shared by many people I spoke to, was that the pace of innovation in computer graphics seemed slower, and that the technologies, products, and applications on display seemed unfocused compared to previous years. But when I considered this in the context of the keynote address--titled "The Big Picture"--by technologist Danny Hillis, the new developments took on much greater significance.

Hillis's message was that although we are right in the middle of an era of astonishing creativity--when technology and civilization are undergoing phenomenal change--it's hard to see this from our usual vantage point. We must instead look at this period in the context of evolution as a whole and understand how similar transformations have occurred over time whenever living things have changed the way they process information--which is a very big picture indeed. Here's a summary of his unique point of view:

The story begins several billion years ago, when the earth was a steaming rock, and the single-celled organisms that existed at the time learned a remarkable trick. Instead of relying simply on their own cell-division processes to multiply, they took the recipe for reproduction, standardized it, and stored it in a separate information-handling system--which we call DNA--that all forms of life could share. After that, organisms evolved as multi-cellular creatures, and life became so successful that it completely changed the face of the earth.

The next great evolutionary leap took place about 100 million years ago, when living things began to develop special ...