Computing pioneer Larry Smarr and his quantified self

BB pal Larry Smarr is director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and was director of the NCSA during the birth of Mosaic, the first popular Web browser. I have the opportunity to chat with Larry with some frequency as he's on the advisory board of Institute for the Future where I'm a researcher. I'm always intrigued by Larry's stories of his quantified self practices. For years, Larry has been examining his own body at a very high resolution by charting almost every bodily function he can measure. Beyond what Larry's learned about himself, his sheer discipline bowls me over. The Atlantic's Mark Bowden profiled Larry:

“Have you ever figured how information-rich your stool is?,” Larry asks me with a wide smile, his gray-green eyes intent behind rimless glasses. “There are about 100 billion bacteria per gram. Each bacterium has DNA whose length is typically one to 10 megabases—call it 1 million bytes of information. This means human stool has a data capacity of 100,000 terabytes of information stored per gram. That’s many orders of magnitude more information density than, say, in a chip in your smartphone or your personal computer. So your stool is far more interesting than a computer.”

At 63, he is engaged in a computer-aided study of the human body—specifically, his body. It’s the start of a process that he believes will help lead, within 10 years, to the development of “a distributed planetary computer of enormous power,” one that is composed of a billion processors and will enable scientists to create, among many other things, a working computational model of your body. Your particular body, mind you, not just some generalized atlas of the human frame, but a working model of your unique corpus, grounded in your own genome, and—using data collected by nano sensors and transmitted by smartphone—refreshed continually with measurements from your body’s insides. This information stream will be collated with similar readings from millions of other similarly monitored bodies all over the planet. Mining this enormous database, software will produce detailed guidance about diet, supplements, exercise, medication, or treatment—guidance based not on the current practice of lumping symptoms together into broad categories of disorders, but on a precise reading of your own body’s peculiarities and its status in real time.

“And at that point,” says Larry, in a typically bold pronouncement that would startle generations of white-coated researchers, “you now have, for the first time in history, a scientific basis for medicine.”

"The Measured Man"

• [nixiebunny]

  That computer model of a particular person is a tall order.  In order to have a model that’s anywhere near accurate, you’d have to collect many terabytes of information from your body. How to do that non-destructively is a big fat question mark.

• [Mark McAndrew]

  Distributed planetary computer of unimaginable power, running simulations of the human body itself… no human or animal testing required, bespoke drugs designed in seconds…

  This is precisely why we invented Charity Engine (as seen on BoingBoing recently): 
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjqHXsVF-0

• [Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston]

  It’s the start of a process that he believes will help lead, within 10 years, to the development of “a distributed planetary computer of enormous power,”

  It’s interesting to note that in this sentence, you can pinpoint the EXACT THREE WORDS where Larry Smarr stops being someone you take seriously.

  • [Mitchell Glaser]

    Heh, I’m not sure why we should listen to a guy who thinks his stool is more interesting than a computer.

  • [Dr. Roboto]

    I like that he took the risk of making a prediction.  I believe more scientists, geeks, and nerds need to take chances and I hate to see people try to insinuate some sort of social opprobrium for bold statements.

    • [Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston]

      Pure guesswork based on no credible fact, with absolutely no look at the speed at which history progresses, predicting a planetary computer within 10 years? That bursts any fabric of plausible prediction, and moves past boldness into pure silliness.

      Also: “insinuate” a “social opprobrium”? Come on, man. Don’t write silly.

      • [Dr. Roboto]

        Embrace the silly!

• [archanoid]

  The problem I have with the claim about information density and the volume of data in the stool is that “data capacity of 100,000 terabytes of information stored per gram” only works if 98% of the data is redundant. Yes, there’s a lot of data in the DNA of 100 billion bacteria, but it’s almost entirely the same data repeated 100 billion times.

  • [Dr. Roboto]

     But, he also left it to just DNA, whereas he could have factored in all the derivative information content present in proteins (to take just one level of complexity). The DNA determines the make up of the protein, but then the ordering and relationships of proteins and molecules to one another is much greater informational content.

    His estimate is the minimum informational density!

    • [Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston]

      Secondary calculation based on information isn’t information. Running a process based on genetic sequence is a property of that process, not of the genome itself. That’s why it’s derivative information – it’s derived from something.

      The numbers 1 through 10 can be used in a vast number of calculations, but that doesn’t make the set of information more than 1 to 10.

      • [Dr. Roboto]

        I think that you’re assuming something that doesn’t have to be assumed.  One can view look at a lot full of cars and count the number of tires, or you could be ignorant of tires and view each car as a single entity unto itself signifying 1 car.

        As far as I can tell, Smarr is only counting information at a single resolution/granularity–DNA base pairs.  I appreciate that you’re viewing the proteins and molecules as products of the base pairs, and if you do so, I completely agree. I would beg to differ with you if you say that information is limited or constrained in such a manner though.  The only constraint is our own ability to conceive/process what is apparently a transfinite ability to store information.

        tl;dr  He could have counted quarks instead of DNA and would have come up with an even greater capacity and would still be accurate.

• [Nicky G]

  One aspect of my job involves selling people SANs (Storage Area Networks), and now I feel like I should just be selling them piles of shit. What to do?!

  • [Dr. Roboto]

     Emphasize the pleasant aroma of your SANs! :)

• [Darren McWilliams]

  If this guy ever becomes aware of the human microbiome, he’s in for a shock.
  Perhaps he’s been staring at his poop too long?