1. A computer-implemented method for de-centralized stream processing, the method comprising: providing a plurality of processing nodes each of said processing nodes configured to transmit and receive a stream of data; providing a genome that includes, at least in part, a hierarchical set of tasks; identifying at each one of the plurality of processing nodes one or more tasks from the hierarchical set of tasks; adding one or more new processing nodes to a computing system; determining a source node based upon, at least in part, an activation level being above or below a particular threshold; wherein automatically determining includes analyzing at least one of the activation level and an inhibition level; and for each of the one or more added processing nodes, automatically determining an appropriate role, based upon, at least in part, a neighboring processing node; wherein the role refers to a process that modifies input data to produce output data.