See Simon, The Sciences Of The Artificial for background.  In short, these are systems and languages that we (humans) create for our own purposes.  This is to distinguish from "natural systems" that have their own origins.

Our purpose in pointing to this distinction is to say that all systems created by man can be re-created by man, that we can re-purpose our systems of dying to be systems of living, we can beat our swords into ploughshares.  In spite of all the claims that things are the way they are because that is the way of things, and the way they will always be, we have changed them and we will change them again.  We expect humankind will want to use more intelligence and wisdom in the re-design.

Our primary hammer and anvil system includes an embrace and extend model for dealing not with enemies of some abstract state but with actual realities faced by our friends and our selves. We move to the commons because we have not only common needs but also common skills, some specific, some general; some develped others developing, but all through a program of common deliverence from death to life and good - common good.