The latter, a kind of rudimentary purpose. Of course humanoids exhibit largely conscious design and the lower animals act from mostly evolutionary instinct, while even the behavior of compounds at the threshold between microorganism and molecule appears vaguely purposeful. Atoms or molecules grouping to become a crystal no doubt has some kind of survival value as with other instances of reaction, attraction and repulsion at the atomic level.

Thus nothing is entirely anything and everything is partly something else. The neutron is conscious

So there's no distinct dividing line where a being or object undergoing a process can be called totally aimless or lacking conscious purpose. As an ordinary concept the digital world at present can hardly be called deliberate. Again, though, there's no fundamental distinction between today's digital complex monopolizing our spare time and the day when Star-Trek Data-like androids enslave us

We think it's exclusively under our control while it acts to bolster that assumption til we're happy doing its bidding, convinced it is we who are still in control

You might reply, but Data isn't conscious. Yet no doubt you've heard the argument where every cell of a human body is replaced, one at a time, by its submicroscopic semiconductor equivalent until it is technically a machine, like Data. Surely it will claim it still possesses feeling and is under its own conscious control just as we do now in our denial that the digital world is surely but slowly taking over

Gees, I just glanced at the time; I've been at this longer than I had intended

dalehileman