Vivisystems

In Kevin Kelly's book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, he writes: "The apparent veil between the organic and the manufactured has crumpled to reveal that the two really are, and have always been, of one being. What should we call that common soul between the organic communities we know of as organisms and ecologies, and their manufactured counterparts of robots, corporations, economies, and computer circuits? I call those examples, both made and born, 'vivisystems' for the lifelikeness each kind of system holds" (3).

The made and the born...will we make this distinction in Kelly's version of the future, where the hive mind rules? Kelly's intimate connection with WIRED is significant here. If any publication has tried to define and plot out the economic-technological future, it is this one. Remember --- there is no such thing as the future; we only have the past and the now. The now just keeps extending. We are creating the "future" every minute. Kelly's book is full of fascinating ideas about complexity and the "neo-biological," but it might give you the shivers. The future is never a done deal. Don't give away your stake in it or disempower yourself by assuming you have no say.

I don't really like the term "vivisystem," it reminds me too much of vivisection, which unsettles me.