n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself;
this could be a living organism, an idea (see
meme), a program
(see
worm,
wabbit, and
virus), a pattern in a cellular
automaton (see
life, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or
nanobot. It is even claimed by some that
UNIX and
C
are the symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see
UNIX conspiracy.