What If...

From what I've read, life on Earth began when enough complex chemicals had enough energy pumped through them to start a self perpetuating chain reaction. Amino acids making proteins, which in turn made bacteria (something like that, anyway...) and so on.

I wonder how far away we are from the same thing happening on the Internet. You know, a power surge comes along, and all of a sudden your website is updating itself and complaining that you never spend any time with it because of your addiction to this so-called "real life."

Scary thing is, it's not all that far-fetched. All we are is a conglomeration of ever-simpler chemicals. Couldn't you get the same effect via a conglomeration of ever-simpler ideas? The odds against it happening by chance have to be as enormous as the odds of a chemical soup congealing into proteins, but couldn't it happen given enough interlinked information?

Kind of like the million monkeys hammering on typewriters and finally reproducing Shakespeare. I like it.