I read it like "microcosm", i.e. a small isolated and autonomous universes which can continue to like and perform correctly by itself without depending on the outside. However if this evolution includes a growth (and not simply a survival in its existing state), it will fatally start to use external resources and depend on them, and it could fragment itself into competing microcosms...
Compare "uCOS" to "um" (common abbreviation of "micrometer" in US English (or "micrometre" in British English) reduced to the Basic Latin character set: this is not a latin letter u, but the symbol for the "micro-" prefix, borrowing the Greek mu letter used as well to write the same prefix in Greek where it originated).
