This paper presents the Living Systems Technology Suite, LS/TS, a middleware based on autonomous software agents and autonomic computing principles. Specifically, the paper describes the autonomic principles built into LS/TS, and the features that follow from them. These features are described within the context of a general taxonomy of autonomic systems, elaborating on the relationship between middleware and application levels. Lastly, the paper addresses the problem of system self-representation, leveraging LS/TS support for ontology and semantic agent communication.