Nano-Artwork Making Nano-Circuits

In 2000, I wrote (here), "[w]e've already begun incorporating computers into ourselves, and it’s hard not to believe that one day, computers themselves will qualify as a life-form. We may already have commenced our greatest creation, the species that will succeed us and carry on."

. . . . and (here), "[p]erhaps the key characteristics of a living system can be summed up as having to do with the regulation and processing of material passing in and out of the system so as to maintain itself as a recognizable identity or form. The article my friend gave me on general systems theory pointed out that boundary and identity maintenance are key functions of any living system. The boundaries or skin of any living system should be neither too yielding or permeable, on the one hand, nor too rigid or impenetrable, on the other hand. If the boundaries are too rigid or impenetrable, interaction between the entity and its environment will be overly restricted and the entity will likely starve, explode, stagnate, or be unable to respond or adapt as necessary to changing external conditions or events. An individual or group can be destroyed through failing to take in resources or new information quickly enough. On the other hand, if the boundaries are too soft or permeable, the entity may be too vulnerable to deformation or invasion by outside pressures or attack, or to being depleted, or otherwise destabilized or overwhelmed to the point that it either disintegrates or is changed beyond recognition.

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"My theory also suggests there may be optimal velocities or rates at which various functions might be performed, i.e., rates of change that balance the need for growth and the need for stability, given the exigencies of the environment in which the system exists. For a system to be healthy in the sense of surviving in identifiable form, it seems a balance is needed between softness and hardness, openness and closedness, and between rapid and slow rates of change."

As Paul Rothemund says, "To create complex forms, life performs computations."