Relating to Computer Life

Abstract

The emergence of computer life is having an immense impact on human society—and on the existence of other organisms in the world. This is a simple ecological truth. No important new species can emerge without disturbing the biological balance, without upsetting the ecological frame of reference. The computer impact is multi-dimensional: perhaps we should talk about impacts (a fashionable but inelegant term in the computer literature). Computers are affecting employment patterns, industrial productivity, the service professions, the efficiency of war-making machines, and the human self-image. We are likely to have mixed feelings about an emerging biological species, or family of species, that can have such a wide-ranging effect on human life.