The idea of "living software" is software that exhibits certain characteristic organisational features of living organisms. ?In particular, it should self-maintain or self-repair in the face of error (for example, malfunction of the underlying hardware, or interference from other software components); it should be capable of self-reproduction; and, ultimately, it should be capable of spontaneous growth of complexity through a process directly analogous to Darwinian evolution. The quest to devise such living software is virtually as old as the digital computer itself. Even as von Neumann's first general purpose (but strictly serial) computer was being commissioned at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the early 1950's, he was already describing a detailed design for highly evolvable self-reproducing software to be embedded in a massively parallel hardware architecture (his so-called "tesselation" or "cellular" automaton). In this presentation I will trace the history of research into the design of living software from this beginning, almost 60 years ago, through to its most modern incarnations in "coreworlds" and "artificial chemistries". I will summarise the deep, and poorly understood, problems that that still seem to beset the field; and then look forward to the prospects for progress, and ultimately for practical applications.

Professor Barry McMullin received his PhD from the National University of Ireland in May 1993, for his thesis entitled Artificial Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, which deals with evolutionary methods of developing complex artificial systems. His primary research activity is in the domain of Artificial Life. He serves on the organizing committees of both the European and US conferences on Artificial Life, is a member of the Editorial board of the Artificial Life Journal, and has been a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also active in the domain of accessibility of information