Machinecology

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Machinecology

Science > Biology > Ecology
Technology > Technology Type or Material > Nanotech

Image from Steve Bowers
A swarm planet in Sextans, apparently infected with a machinecology of unknown origin.

A Machinecology is an artificial analog to a biological ecology. The components of a machine ecology may include nanotech robotic bacteria-analogs and microscale and macroscale analogs to autotrophs, heterotrophs and decay organisms. In some cases such an ecology is capable of evolution by exchanging and self-modifying the design specifications of each independent component. In other cases the machinecology is directed by an intelligent agent of some sort, sometimes contained within the ecology and sometimes external to it.

Some machinecologies solely consist of hylonanites, with no macroscale components; these are referred to as hylonanoecologies, or machinanoecologies. Machine ecologies of this kind are often used as a first stage in terraforming, or as a mining strategy.

Image from Richard Patterson
Stanislaw Mechosystem

A planet or megastructure which is covered in machinecologies is commonly known as a botworld. Since almost every planet in the Terragen Sphere holds a significant amount of self-maintaining machinery, the mechanical content of each world is known collectively as the Mechosphere.

Image from Anders Sandberg
Bothyga M'Vau, a planet covered in feral machinecologies

Machine ecologies are considerably more common than biological ecologies in volumes controlled by the Diamond Network and the Solipsist Panvirtuality. In the Current Era both of these metaempires avoid worlds with biological lifeforms, as it seems that they wish to avoid uncontrolled hybridisation events.

Bionanecology
Bothyga M'Vau
Botworld
Eganfodugbe
Hylonanecology - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
A nanecology built solely on inorganic nanobots. The most extreme form is Machinonanecology. In practice however most hylonanecologies and bionanecologies tend to merge, with each using components found in the other; the difference between them being one of degree rather than of kind.
M-Life
Mechmoss and Nanoalgae
Mechology, Mechosystem
Nano-ecology, Nanecology - Text by Anders Sandberg
A distributed system of nanodevices and the structures constructed by them that self-organizes in a bottom-up manner without any central control; analogous to an ecology. Sometimes used to denote the entire nanosphere of a world, even when parts of it are under top-down control.
Perihelion (world)
Remnant, The
Sextans Swarmers
Stanislaw

Appears in Topics

Ecology

Nanotech

Development Notes

Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Updated by Steve Bowers 2018
Initially published on 08 December 2001.

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