The towers themselves projections of mobile, virtual systems that the information revolution has made possible. Information technocracy is dominated by a cognitariat whose powers lie in access to codes. These codes are manifested in symbolic displays of well-being, glamour and political accountability. In Baudrillard's strange loop of symbolic exchange, the signified, that is, what may be simulated, is becoming what is real. With the collapse of AI, simulation has in any case failed, and now what taken its place is the creation of the real artefact.
Artificial life is no longer about the simulation of carbon based life forms.
Now, as both a part of and as an icon for Baudrillard's strange loop, AL is taking the form of real life and, by interacting with real life, is beginning to participate in cultural evolution. Cultural evolution is Lamarkian. That is, the variation on which selection acts is produced by the actions of the evolving organisms themselves. Darwinian evolution, by contrast, holds that selection acts on essentially random variation. In fact, recent developments in the Darwinian theory of human evolution, also give a far more significant role to action than hitherto, recognising that humans are a form of life that more than any other creates the environment which it inhabits.