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In science fiction, 'bootstrapping' a society involves advancing it to a more advanced technological, evolutionary, or cultural state working entirely from within, without outside assistance of any kind. Many human technological advances, for example, are made by using simple tools to create more complex ones, those tools to create ones still more complex, and so on;this is an example of bootstrapping for any group which goes through the entire development process, as opposed to obtaining from a more advanced nation or culture technologies it cannot create directly. The term is derived from the concept of "pulling one's self up by one's own bootstraps," and is the opposite of "uplift," a concept popularized by David Brin's Uplift Universe novels -- the conceptual contrast is analogous to 'bootstrapping' by Darwinian evolution versus being 'uplifted' by an Intelligent Designer.

Biological Uplift