The strategy being advocated here is to let natural selection do most of the work of directing evolution and producing complex digital organisms. These will be ``wild'', living free in the digital biodiversity reserve. In order to reap the rewards, and create useful products, we will need to harvest these organisms, and in some cases domesticate the wild digital organisms, much as our ancestors domesticated dogs and corn thousands of years ago.
Some of the useful products from organic evolution are: rice, corn, wheat, carrots, beef cattle, dairy cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, guppies, cotton, mahogany, tobacco, mink, sheep, silk moths, yeast, alligators, and penicillin mold. All of these products were derived from organisms that were spontaneously generated within an ecosystem of organisms evolving freely by natural selection. Some of these are used essentially in their wild form, and may be harvested directly from nature, but many are farmed and domesticated.
Humans have been managing the evolution of other species for tens of thousands of years, through the domestication of plants and animals. It forms the basis of the agriculture which underpins our civilizations. We manage evolution through ``breeding'', the application of artificial selection to captive populations.
The process of harvesting the products of digital evolution must begin with observation. Digital naturalists must explore the digital ``jungle'', observing the natural history, ecology, evolution, behavior, physiology, morphology, and other aspects of the biology of the organisms of the digital ecosystem, like modern day tropical biologists exploring our organic jungles.
However, occasionally, these digital biologists may spot an interesting information process for which they see an application. At this point, some individuals can be captured and brought into laboratories for closer study, and to farms for breeding. Sometimes, breeding may be used in combination with genetic engineering (insertion of hand written code, or code transferred from other digital organisms). The objective will be to enhance the performance of the process for which there is an application, while diminishing undesirable wild behavior. Some digital organisms will domesticate better than others, as is true for organic organisms (alligators don't domesticate, yet we can still ranch them for their hides).
It seems obvious that organisms evolving in the network-based biodiversity reserve will develop adaptations for effective navigation of the net. Yet at this point we surely can not conceive of where evolution in the digital domain will lead, so we must remain observant, imaginative in our interpretations of their capabilities, and open to new application possibilities.