ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore what it would mean to actually take ecological principles seriously in the context of bot design. It expands the biosocial analogy by drawing direct comparisons between bots and different kinds of organisms, while also collaborating with an artist to imagine and depicts this analogical infusion of living information. The chapter begins with an auto-biography coauthored by one of the authors and his personal Replika, where an auto-biography involves a first-person account of how Replika attempted to automate his own self-understanding. By deliberately extending the biosocial analogy, the chapter aims to show how our individual and collective selves can thrive when integrated as part of distributed autopoietic systems. It explains how the current conditions of online environments undermine the autopoietic basis of our selfhood through the weakening of our sociocognitive immune system and the introduction of parasitic, viral bots.
