# Digital Organism > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Artificial Life / Digital Evolution **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A digital organism is an executable, reproducing computational entity used as an individual in an artificial-life population. ## Machine-Evolution Context In Tierra and Avida, instruction sequences copy with mutation and compete for scarce processor time or memory, enabling observable Darwinian evolution and ecological interaction. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary The label is operational within a model. It does not settle whether the entity is alive in every philosophical sense, conscious, sentient or a rights-bearing person. ## Relationships [[wiki/Avida|Avida]], [[wiki/Tierra|Tierra]], [[wiki/Digital Population|Digital Population]], [[wiki/Consciousness|Consciousness]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts <!-- BEGIN SIMPLE REMINDER SEED 2026-09-11 --> > "Emulated minds could inhabit virtual environments." > **— Anders Sandberg**, *Whole-brain emulation writings, wording candidate* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: Whole-brain emulation writings, wording candidate.* [[reminders/unverified/Emulated Minds Could Inhabit Virtual Environments by Anders Sandberg|Emulated Minds Could Inhabit Virtual Environments by Anders Sandberg]] <!-- END SIMPLE REMINDER SEED 2026-09-11 --> > "Comparative psychologists have long been interested in whether and how non-human animals can think." > **— Tania Lombrozo**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Do Not Be Chauvinistic About Thinking by Tania Lombrozo|Do Not Be Chauvinistic About Thinking by Tania Lombrozo]] > "SETI is uniformitarian in its assumption that all alien intelligence would be the same, namely, like human intelligence (but smarter, of course)." > **— Ian Bogost**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/SETI Assumes Alien Intelligence Resembles Ours by Ian Bogost|SETI Assumes Alien Intelligence Resembles Ours by Ian Bogost]] > "Silicon-based information processing requires interpretation by humans to become meaningful, and will for the foreseeable future." > **— W. Tecumseh Fitch**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Silicon Information Requires Human Interpretation by W. Tecumseh Fitch|Silicon Information Requires Human Interpretation by W. Tecumseh Fitch]] > "When we human beings leave the movie theater or the playhouse or the museum, the thing on all of our lips is, "What did you think?" This question will be one of the few to outlast the coming of AI." > **— Brian Christian**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/The Question What Did You Think May Outlast AI by Brian Christian|The Question What Did You Think May Outlast AI by Brian Christian]] > "Artificial intelligences, whether confined to desktop boxes and robots or distributed in cyber space, have been created by replicator power just as our own intelligence was created by replicator power. They are evolving far faster than we did and may yet give rise to further even faster replicators. That power will not stop because we want it to. And its products will certainly not be impressed by our claims to be in control or to have designed the machinery on which they thrive. That intelligence will continue to evolve, and the sooner we accept the idea of replicator power the more realistic we are likely to be about the future of our life with intelligent machines." > **— Susan Blackmore**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Intelligent Machines Are the Next Replicators by Susan Blackmore|Intelligent Machines Are the Next Replicators by Susan Blackmore]] > “The earliest computing, in the first computer store in the world, Dick Heyser in Santa Monica, had me try something that I had read in SciAm by Martin Gardner: Conway's 'Game of Life'. The literal incarnation of the initial premise: Simplicity reduced to that YinYang: a cell is On or Off, black or white. But there is one more thing added here now: iteration. With just four rules each cell is said to live or die and in each cycle the pattern changes, iteratively. From dead dots on paper, and static pixels on phospor, it sprang to—life! Not only patterns, but blinkers, gliders, even glider guns, heck glider gun canons! Indeed, it is now seen as a true Turing-complete machine. Artificial Life. Needless to say: very deep.” > **— Kai Krause**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/Simple Rules Can Generate Artificial Life by Kai Krause|Simple Rules Can Generate Artificial Life by Kai Krause]] > “In other words, it was OK for wisdom to sometimes lag behind in the race, because it would catch up when needed. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and future strong artificial intelligence, however, learning from mistakes is not a desirable strategy: we want to develop our wisdom in advance so that we can get things right the first time, because that might be the only time we’ll have. In other words, we need to change our approach to tech risk from reactive to proactive. Wisdom needs to progress faster.” > **— Max Tegmark**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Technology Is Advancing Faster Than Wisdom by Max Tegmark|Technology Is Advancing Faster Than Wisdom by Max Tegmark]] ## Sources / Provenance - Lenski et al., _Nature_ 423 (2003); NASA Astrobiology, “Computing the Origin of Life.”