Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), sometimes called decentralized autonomous corporations or autonomous agents have become a hot new topic both in social media and in software engineering, especially as they are interrelated with advances in cryptoledgers/cryptocurrencies.

Vitalik Buterin has written a three-part series (1 2 3) about software-based DAOs over at the Ethereum blog that gives a pretty good overview and capability of what a DAO is able to do.  While many more volumes will be written on this topic, last Mike Hearn gave a brief overview of what hardware applications may look like:

See also: Mike Hearn’s 2012 presentation in London (video) as well as his interview last fall with Newfination (video).