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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.
Digital Darwinism was produced by
John
Keefe as part of Making
Connections:
Science on Soundprint, funded in
part
by the National Science Foundation.
Research by Samantha Beres.
Thanks to
David Bergman, the musical group
Nightnoise and Victor Zeuthen.
Links:
MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Tom Ray's Home Page
Rain forest biologist Tom Ray grew self-replicating, evolving digital creatures in his
laptop computer.
American Association for Artificial Intelligence Home Page
ACM SIGART
Live Artificial Life Page
See artificial life animations before your eyes
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