The Biology of Computer Life: Survival, Emotion and Free Will

The doctrine of computer life is not congenial to many people. Often they have not thought in any depth about the idea, and it necessarily disturbs their psychological and intellectual frame of reference: it forces a reappraisal of what it is to be alive, what it is to be human, and whether there are profound, yet un­ expected, implications in the development of modern computers. There is abundant evidence to suggest that we are wit­ nessing the emergence of a vast new family of life-forms ...