A
phrase coined, as far as I can tell, by
Kevin Kelly in his book "
Out of Control", copyright 1994.
He uses "vivisystem" to describe the
melding of
mechanical and
natual systems; things that are
man-made, but
instilled with
Life's Laws. He believes this to be the
eventual direction humanity is heading for: One where the
things and machines we create will
grow,
learn, and
heal like living things.
The
things Kelly sees as part of a "
unified biological frontier" are many,
complex, and
grand in scale: Things like
computer virus incubators,
artificial ecologies,
virtual worlds and the like.
In Chapter One, part
three, Kevin writes the
following intriguing paragraph about the advent of
vivisystems :
"Yet as we unleash living forces into our created machines, we lose control of them. They acquire wildness and some of the surprises that the wild entails. This, then, is the dilemma that all gods must accept: that they can no longer be completely sovereign over their finest creations."
You can
read the rest of
Kevin's book online at http://www.well.com/user/kk/OutOfControl.