All our artifice isn't meaningfully different than termite mounds in this sort of sense.

So, a more prudent/understandable question is: just how alien do you need to be to unsure where to draw the "organism/not-organism" line on a termite mound+termites or as a counterpoint: on a snail or clam vs thier shell.

Does the fact that the shell of animal was chemically changed by it's body give it some specialness? Or would an animal that constructed limb extensions on demand from wood or stone include those bits? What about brain extensions from bits of metal and glass?

“Imagine, for a moment, a beautiful flower. That flower might be an orchid or a rose, or even a simple little daisy growing beside a path. Looking into a flower, we can see that it is full of life. It contains soil, rain, and sunshine. It is also full of clouds, oceans, and minerals. It is even full of space and time. In fact, the whole cosmos is present in this one little flower. If we took out just one of these “non-flower” elements, the flower would not be there. Without the soil’s nutrients, the flower could not grow. Without rain and sunshine, the flower would die. And if we removed all the non-flower elements, there would be nothing substantive left that we could call a “flower.” So our observation tells us that the flower is full of the whole cosmos, while at the same time it is empty of a separate self-existence. The flower cannot exist by itself alone.“

Faced with a field of flowers the technology to examine them in detail and without existing schema to bias, it is unlikely a flower in isolation could be considered a single organism, thier roots meld and many organisms require each other for metabolic and reproductive processes to succeed, it seem most likely to consider the he entire field a single organism in the sense you are reaching for.

Why?

The logic that would lead to thier classification as a "community" if applied evenly would force us to consider every multicellular organism a "community".

In persuit of this mystery, we looked closely at the flower, found all the petals, stamen, and roots were in fact made of little plants themselves. Often these "cells" are of different shape shape and function in the flower, but chemical stimulation seems all it takes to coerce most to take on a different role.

The truth perhaps, is that there isn't a flower, only a civilization of these "cells" but thier behavior, cooperation, and the structures of sugars that build around themselves are what makes up the "flower" and that it's current form was borne of millions of years of iteration and experimentation in form and function made it what it is today.

From the outside, the termite mound (and all the termites inside) are reasonably all the body of one organism. Just as reasonably they are not functionality different than a human body or a human civilization. The only difference between an i9 and your bones is the story you tell yourself about it.

Simply put, both birds and planes have wings but one if a flexible membrane that flaps and the other is a fixed structure with a jet engine.

Otherwise, what makes building a flying machine with a fixed structure and a jet engine fundamentally different than incorporating environmental iron into a shell? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_gastropod

I've heard of the worm with a fool's gold shoe before (or iron sulfide of some kind). There are also Antarctic fish that make antifreeze proteins that bind to ice crystals to stop them grow. Also trees make themselves by extracting smoke from the air using light and water.

Ok, so maybe I have to work on the analogies. However, my point is that organic systems (biological organisms) are embedded in physical systems. They can manipulate the environment to collect energy and use bits of it to repair themselves.

Talking of iron-sulfide, there are tiny cubes of Fe-S in many enzymes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron%E2%80%93sulfur_protein). I remember talking with my supervisor at Glasgow about the possibility of these being fragments of ancient catalytic machinery from when biology was much closer to the metal (as it were) and these parts have gradually been enveloped in protein.

I liked Alexander Cairns-Smith's book that describes a 'rope' of systems, starting with a thread of replicating clay that templates replicating RNA that leads to DNA and so on. It makes sense to me that the origin of life would have to involve the rocks and minerals. Nick Lane has some theory about serpentinite as well.

Summing up, biological systems can absolutely have metal parts. They even have rotational engines (of a sort) in flagella. However, biological and non-biological designs are often very different because of the different scales and levels of organisation. A human is organised across at least 7 levels (atoms, molecules, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, whole) where a tractor is really just (atoms, parts, whole). A fruit fly swims through the air due to its tiny scale, while a plan e forces its way through.

Apologies, bit of a ramble - I'm a little tired today.

This is our disconnect. I'm arguing for definitions that are scale invariant. In the long run and the wide (universal) scale I would expect any developing system to just increase in "layers of scale" over time so basing our labels on them doesn't seem useful.

In that view "technology" is just another natural specialist organelle produced by the biosphere.

As a fun aside, In the context of viewing the entire biosphere as an organism implies we are it's (still maturing) reproductive organs and that space colonization and terriforming will just be the organisms calfing season.

  Ahhh, now I see!
  There is no forest, only trees.

Defenders of Complex Justice.

Technology is also a self replicator in the space of ideas and artefacts, and it also has limited resources available.

Congratulations! You just realized why the Fermi Paradox is self-assuming tripe, or the concept of “Von Neumann probes”