The micrograph on the right is the same picture, but with a "membrane " drawn around the film’s periphery. A membrane around the film would enable the bacterial community to finely control the composition and character of their environment, a necessary development that would enhance their survival. This modified film resembles the cytological anatomy of the evolutionarily more advanced eukaryotic cell. In this case the bacteria would represent the cell’s organelles and the film’s matrix would represent the cytoskeletal-rich cytoplasm between the organelles. Interestingly, the eukaryotes cytoplasm possesses many of the same structural components that characterize the biofilm’s matrix. This especially true of the actin and myosin which enable the bacteria to move in the film in the same manner that organelles move in the cytoplasm.

The point of this discussion is that the more advanced eukaryotic cell, rather than being an evolved single entity, might represent the evolution of a bacterial community. A cell would represent a finely tuned community of prokaryotes that have differentiated into organelles. Such a hypothesis supports the beliefs of pleomorphic biologists, a small but staunch group of scientists that believe disease related micro-organisms may represent life forms that arose, budded-off, from dying cells. Makes sense.

Regardless, the second phase of evolution saw the origin of the more sophisticated eukaryotic (nucleated) cell. However, evolution ceased when the nucleated cell reached its maximum specific size, for there are physical limitations imposed on cellular life. If the cell attempts to expand its surface area beyond a given size, the cell will become unstable, for if it exceeds certain dimensions, the membrane will not be physically able to constrain the mass of its cytoplasm. This will lead to a rupture of the membrane and a loss of the membrane potential (from which the cell draws its life-giving energy). Also, if the cell exceeds a certain diameter, than the process of diffusion would not enable enough oxygen for metabolic processing to reach the central portion of the cell.

As a result, in the history of evolution, the first 3 billion years were primarily associated with appearance and evolution unicellular organisms (bacteria, algae, protozoans). It was the origin of multicellular organisms that represented an alternative way to expand the membrane surface area (i.e., awareness potential) beyond the limitations of the single cell. Consequently, in what amounted to a third phase of evolution, an increase in biological "computer" power (awareness) resulted from a the same process of organizing into higher order communities. Rather than increasing awareness of the individual eukaryotic cell, the third phase of evolution was concerned with the ordering of individual eukaryotic cell 'chips' into interactive assemblies. 

This "phasing" of evolution resembles that which occurred in the computer industry. Texas Instruments developed the chip. Individual chips are the heart of the simple calculator. However, when many chips were integrated and wired together they provided for the computer. When individual computers reached their maximum power, supercomputers were created by assembling many computers into an organized parallel-processing "community." The bacterium’s relation to the eukaryotic cell is tantamount to the chip’s relationship with the computer. The eukaryotic cell’s relation to the multicellular organism is the same as an individual computer’s relation to the whole in a parallel-processing network.