Technological systems have been a part of human life since prehistory. Although they initially took the form of passive tools, such as axes and spoons, the Industrial Revolution saw the advent of powered, mechanized technology, operating “under it’s own steam,” without direct human control over every action. By integrating more complex information processing machinery, automation evolved into autonomy as decision-making and self-regulation became features of modern technology. Now, so-called intelligent systems, embodying techniques from the field of artificial intelligence (AI), are designed with the explicit intention of replicating rational behaviors and the sorts of things that minds do, inside technological systems.
At the same time, the study of Artificial Life (ALife) (Langton, 1987) has explored the properties of living systems, both as they are found in nature, as they might be, and as humans can build them. This has exposed a large variety of mechanisms that produce qualities typically...