We explore the open-ended nature of evolution in Genelife, an evolutionary extension of Conway’s Game of Life cellular automaton in which “live” cell states are endowed at birth with a genome that affects their local dynamics and can be inherited. Both genetic sequences and locally connected spatial patterns are analyzed for novelty, keeping track of all new structures, and innovation is quantified using activity statistics. The impacts of both spatial symmetry breaking with nontotalistic rules and superimposed density regulation of the live state proliferation on the open-ended nature of the evolution are explored. Conditions are found where both genetic and spatial patterns exhibit open-ended innovation. This innovation appears to fall short of functional biological innovation, however, and potential reasons for this are discussed.

We argue that technology changes over time by an evolutionary process that is similar in important respects to biological evolution. The process is adaptive in the sense that technologies are selected because of their specific adaptive value and not at random, but this adaptive evolutionary process differs from the Darwinian process of random variation followed by natural selection. We find evidence for the adaptive evolution of technology in the US patent record, specifically, the public bibliographic information of all utility patents issued in the United States from 1976 through 2010. Patents record certain innovations in the evolution of technology. The 1976–2010 patent record is huge, containing almost four million patents. We use a patent's incoming citations to measure its impact on subsequent patented innovations. Weighting innovative impact by the dissimilarity between parent and child technologies reveals that many of the most fecund inventions are door-opening technologies that spawn innovations in widely diverse categories.

The concept of living technology—that is, technology that is based on the powerful core features of life—is explained and illustrated with examples from artificial life software, reconfigurable and evolvable hardware, autonomously self-reproducing robots, chemical protocells, and hybrid electronic-chemical systems. We define primary (secondary) living technology according as key material components and core systems are not (are) derived from living organisms. Primary living technology is currently emerging, distinctive, and potentially powerful, motivating this review. We trace living technology's connections with artificial life (soft, hard, and wet), synthetic biology (top-down and bottom-up), and the convergence of nano-, bio-, information, and cognitive (NBIC) technologies. We end with a brief look at the social and ethical questions generated by the prospect of living technology.

This article lists fourteen open problems in artificial life, each of which is a grand challenge requiring a major advance on a fundamental issue for its solution. Each problem is briefly explained, and, where deemed helpful, some promising paths to its solution are indicated.