Living technology
"Living technology" is a new phrase for a broad range of new technologies that are extraordinarily powerful and useful because they posses the fundamental properties of living systems.
These properties include self-assembly, self-organization, spontaneous repair, metabolism, growth and division, purposeful action, adaptive complexity, evolution, and creative intelligence. Paradigm cases of living technology can be dramatically different. One kind of example involves autonomous, self-organizing information and communication technologies (ICT) that exhibit collective intelligence.
A second kind of example involves biochemical systems, created from scratch in the laboratory, that autonomously possess the properties of minimal cellular life.
ISSP's project on living technology aims to raise public awareness of the emergence of living technology and to bring scientists, policymakers and the public at large together to discuss the priorities for society's future with living technology.