Programmable Plants
Plants can be considered automatons: for instance, they bend towards light because light causes release of plant hormones, which cause the plant to grow asymmetrically (light side of the stem grows faster or slower than the other, causing “bending”). This is a gross oversimplification, but the basic idea is that plant hormones control the plant, there exists inputs to the system and outputs are the excretion of plant hormones. It sounds like a computing device, so could such a system be programmed?
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