Susan Stepney.
Life as a Cyber-Bio-Physical System

GPTP XIX, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, June 2022. pp167–200, Springer 2023

Abstract:

The study of living systems—including those existing in nature, life as it could be, and even virtual life—needs consideration of not just traditional biology, but also computation and physics. These three areas need to be brought together to study living systems as cyber-bio-physical systems, as zoetic systems. Here I review some of the current work on assembling these areas, and how this could lead to a new Zoetic Science. I then discuss some of the significant scientific advances still needed to achieve this goal. I suggest how we might kick-start this new discipline of Zoetic Science through a program of Zoetic Engineering: designing and building living artefacts. The goal is for a new science, a new engineering discipline, and new technologies, of zoetic systems: self-producing far-from-equilibrium systems embodied in smart functional metamaterials with non-trivial meta-dynamics.

@inproceedings(Stepney:2023,
  author = "Susan Stepney",
  title = "Life as a Cyber-Bio-Physical System",
  booktitle = "GPTP XIX, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, June 2022",
  pages = "167-200",
  publisher = "Springer",
  doi = "10.1162/artl_a_00399",
  year = "2023"
)