Digital Ants

Works Cited 

Ant Intelligence. Digital image. Dsc.discovery.com. Discovery, 10 Sept. 2010. Web. . 

When recently searching for a scientific discovery I went on Discovery Channels web page. This was helpful because there are many scientific discoveries’ that are being explained. One that intrigued me was Digital Ants discovered by scientist at Wake Forest University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  So what do these digital ants do? The ant’s act as an antivirus software but better, they crawl inside your computer looking for suspicious activity. Once the ants discover unusually activity it reports it to a superior and multiples many more ants around the virus or “worm” to control it. When a problem is fixed the ants “die” and just a few crawl through the computer. This makes it better sense because usually an anti virus program is on a timer and operates on a schedule. Most people have the anti virus operate at night. When operating during the night the computer uses most of the computers power, which then leaves the computer vulnerable to infection of a virus. The ants can operate all the time because they are so small and use minimal power.

I was drawn to this breakthrough because I hate it when I get a virus on my computer. I uses my computer a lot more than I would like to and when it is infected with a virus its difficult to keep up with school and work. This break through seems as if it could be very helpful on many computers. I also like it because it makes sense. I never knew how previous anti virus software worked and when you understand how something works I think you feel more comfortable using it. This idea is relatively simple and makes sense.

In our world this could stop people from infecting computers with viruses and control and detect virus quicker. Obviously, this would make a lot of peoples lives easier not having to deal with annoying viruses and broken computers. The scientist made this clear by explaining what the Digital Ants do and how they work.

In my opinion this is science because computer viruses is a problem that many people have and their needs to be an easy way to deal with them. This is a break through that helps people deal with the problem. Scientific break through do not have to have to be huge all the time like inventing the telescope. They can be small things that could help everyday people. 

If the scientist we are discussing in class were still alive I would say that Newton could have easily invented Digital Ants. Newton was obviously a very smart man who if was still alive would be a leading scientist making ground breaking discoveries. The things he invented in comparison to Digital Ants were much more complex. Newton did not have anybody’s examples to look at. I believe he could have easily worked on the project of Digital Ants.