The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Biomorphic Software - ACM Queue

While it is certainly true that “the map is not the territory,” most visitors to a foreign country do prefer to take with them at least a guidebook to help locate themselves as they begin their explorations. That is the intent of this article. Although there will not be enough time to visit all the major tourist sites, with a little effort and using the information in the article as signposts, the intrepid explorer can easily find numerous other, interesting paths to explore.

To describe the biologically inspired software approach I have elected to use the term biomorphic, first coined by British zoologist Desmond Morris and popularized by the Darwinist Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker.1 Another term that is sometimes seen is biomimetic, but that is more generally ascribed to something which mimics a specific biological behavior, as oppossed to being more of a metaphor.

Perhaps the first question that comes to mind is, why a biomorphic model? Isn’t software engineering more a matter of mathematics? Of logic and algorithms? Of direct cause and effect: if A, then B? Aren’t biological organisms parts of the messy real world, a world in which behaviors emerge from the interactions of parts, rather than from being explicitly programmed into the individuals? A world where individuals following simple rules seem to build complex patterns and structures? A decentralized world frequently lacking leaders, and apparently not having blueprints, recipes, or templates to control pattern formation? The answer to all these questions is a resounding yes! It is exactly the messiness—the looseness of the distributed, decentralized behavior, pattern formation, and intelligence of the biological models—that makes biomorphic architecture applicable to many computing problems.

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