I think the article is a bit out of focus, but its premise reminded me about the discussions that we students had at the university many years ago. It was a popular view that the universe is a big all-encompassing computer, and everyhting happening in it is part of its computation. Not just life, but really everything. The big question was, is this computer a Turing machine? Not necessarily in the sense of a state machine and an infinite tape, but in the sense of its computational power. These days the question would be whether it is a quantum Turing machine, I guess.