I don't see much difference between computers and what we call living things. This is what started me on thinking of life as being a measure of complexity.
I used to build and program computers for a living and in that time my line between man and machine got quite blurry.
A processor is an incredibly simplified brain. It processes information in the form of electrical signals.
A brain has a way of holding information from the past as a memory (like a hard drive) and a way of holding information for quick access and processing that is happening in the moment (like RAM).
The GPU is the visual cortex.
The motherboard is the nervous system.
The power supply is the heart.
We have made processors with many billions of transistors and multiple processing cores and it seems quite complex, but it is still not the tiniest fraction of even a simple brain. This is why a computer doesn't seem very life like.
The next step of man made life is the internet. If you have ever seen a mapping of the internet, it mimics the shape and growth of neurons and the wide scale structure of the universe.
I don't think it's any coincidence. It is insanely complex and dynamic, changing and growing constantly. Though it doesn't say hi to you when you wake up, and still can't compare to a brain, I think of it as a life form.
Also something worth mentioning is a recent study showing how psiolcybin mushrooms strengthen the connections between parts of the brain. I think this is what causes the higher levels of consciousness during any psychedelic experience (connections in a system raise complexity exponentially!)
This looks a bit like the evolution of computer processors. Stronger connections allow you to do much more. Also the more connected the world is through the internet, the more it shows this web-like pattern that can be seen in many other things.
http://www.businessinsid...rain-connections-2014-10