"Out of Control" was one of the most influential books I had read while in grad school 20 years ago. The book had cataloged number of amazing developments in science. I probably bought a dozen books referenced in this book, on complexity theory, game theory, evolutionary biology, self organizing systems, etc.
Given the book is over 20+ years old, it'd be great to know what has happened since then.
Yeah, I remember reading about Tierra as a kid and getting really excited about where it would go in the future. Didn't hear much about it since, sadly.
If this is interesting to you, another topic to look into is corewars evolvers. A very similar concept, and the results from the programs that are generated are pretty amazing.