Technology, like the economy, is a wholly owned subsidiary of evolution. It's easy to forget. Certainly, human ingenuity has brought something entirely new to the planet. But it has done so by taking advantage of the way the world has always worked. Technology Review is showing an intriguing six-minute video overview of evolutionary computing that makes just this point. The report profiles Eric Bonabeau of Icosystem, a leading authority on complexity and the application of evolutionary technology to business.

Bonabeau makes the point that, from the perspective of evolutionary theory, breeding corn is no different than building potential pharmaceutical molecules with high-end software. In each case, the human designer controls the genetic or chemical parameters of interest and lets nature do its thing--in vivo or in silico. A new generation of choices emerges, from which the designer starts anew, keeping the traits he or she wants and experiments with useless or suboptimal ones. Evolutionary fault-testing of human designs is so good, that engineers themselves are often stunned that they were out-brained by a computer.

Evolutionary engineering produces today's complex ship designs, circuit boards and prescription drugs. Ironically, these days many rhetorical attacks on evolution, which continue a nearly 150-year anti-science tradition, do so over a medium--the Internet--that thrives on the most core principles of emergence.

Darwin's "Tree of Life" copyright Syndics of Cambridge University Library