Harnessing digital evolution

Nearly 150 years ago, Charles Darwin explained how evolution and natural selection transformed the earliest life forms into the rich panoply of life seen today. Scientists estimate this process has been at work on Earth for at least 3.5 billion years. In the world of computing, evolution helps humans solve complex problems in engineering and provides insight into the evolutionary process in nature. To design robust and resilient computational systems, we can take inspiration from nature. Living organisms have an amazing ability to adapt to changing environments, both in the short term through phenotypic plasticity and in the longer term through Darwinian evolution.