Organisms as Information Processors: The Router Fallacy

Biology, we are told, is just another branch of computer science. Organisms are “information processors,” cells are “circuit boards,” and the brain is a “CPU” crunching sensory data. Life itself becomes an input–output machine, designed to shuffle packets of information from receptor to effector with all the grace of a well-oiled server farm.

The metaphor promises clarity, but only at the cost of flattening biology into a sterile flowchart. An organism becomes a black box: stimulus in, behaviour out. Squirrels are routers; frogs are Wi-Fi extenders; bacteria are micro-USB hubs. In this ontology, being alive means little more than “managing data.”

The problem is not just silliness — though the silliness is abundant — but distortion. Organisms do not process “information” in the way machines do. They are not passive devices awaiting input, but relational beings whose activity aligns potentials with environments. A frog’s leap is not the output of a programme fed sensory data; it is an embodied act shaped by context, history, and possibility. To call it “processing” is to erase the organism’s ecological grounding and replace it with a fantasy of computation.

Parody exposes the absurdity. If organisms were truly processors, squirrels would need monthly cloud storage upgrades, whales would suffer server downtime, and humans would install antivirus software before leaving the house. Darwinian evolution itself would look like a frantic IT department, endlessly patching bugs in the system.

Relationally, life is not a network of routers, but a field of alignments. Organisms are not machines handling information; they are participants in unfolding ecological dramas, their meaning inseparable from the contexts they inhabit.