Evolutionary biology is influencing the way we build computers, write software and organize companies. TIME convened a panel of visionaries, including Ray Kurzweil, to address this. Key ideas:

Autonomic computing: bio-inspired systems for managing and maintaining computer networks.

Evolutionary computing (genetic algorithms) for engineering designs.

Software that models the way a community of individuals develops from the diverse decisions of its members — for planning truck routes, for example.

Organizations becoming less hierarchical and self-organizing, as in natural systems.

“The rate of exponential growth is growing exponentially…By 2040 or 2050 nonbiological intelligence will be trillions of times more powerful than biological intelligence,” says Kurzweil.