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Digital Darwinism
Digital Darwinism
A new breed of creatures is populating our planet. Like other Earthly
life forms, they evolve from a few simple cells into higher beings
capable of competition, cooperation, and sexual relations. Unlike
other critters, their habitat is a computer's memory and they are, in
fact, just computer programs. In "Digital Darwinism," producers John
Keefe and Samantha Beres explore this new world of self-evolving
computer organisms. They also show how a bunch of independent computer
programs, or even little robots, can develop community behavior. Like
ants at a picnic, each program or robot just fends for itself: moving
around, looking for food, and collecting food. But when enough of them
get together, computer societies akin to ant colonies "emerge" with
little or no human intervention.
* Listen again to "Digital Darwinism" - this is a 29 minute, 28 mB
.au file. (If you need more information about listening to this
on your computer, see SOUNDPRINT's Listen Again page.)
* Read the script for "Digital Darwinism."
* See artificial life animations before your eyes at the Live
Artificial Life Page. Try "LIFE" and "Swarm" first. Be sure to
read about the simple rules from which the patterns evolve. (Most
of this site requires Tom Ray's Home Page. Ray is also working to
create a digital-organism reserve while also saving rain forest
reserves through his biodiversity reserve project.
* Computer programmers can learn more about Ray's computer colonies
by downloading a copy of Ray's Tierra program. Non-programmers
can see pictures from a host-parasite arms race inside Tierra.
(Once you're there, scroll down to the "ALmond Overview.")
* Learn more about James McLurkin's robotic ants and other
microrobot projects being developed at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab.
* To see James' ants in action, you can download an MPEG movie of
an ant running a maze (549K) or another movie of an ant following
a light and picking up food (321K).
* To explore a variety of other artificial-life sites on the
internet, the best place to start is Marco's Maddening Artificial
Life Page.
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