Artificial Life ed. by Christopher G. Langton (review)

but also how these machines, which were first the property of government and were used to solve ballistics problems and crack codes, moved into the academic and business worlds and then into our homes and were used to do everything from communicating with other computers across the country to writing business letters and keeping accounts. Beginning in Chapter ll-''The Birth of the Fantasy Amplifier"-and continuing through the next three chapters, Rheingold projects into the future with, and through the medium of, his subjects, who include Alan Kay, Brenda Laurel, Avron Barr and others. He clearly shows how computers of the future can be a thought medium and what people are doing now to make these future machines a reality. In the later chapters, Rheingold explores the online culture of the early I980s. He contrasts contemporary culture , as it can be found online today, with the culture of the original makers of the computer. He writes: Weseem to be experiencing one of those rare pivotaltimes between epochs, before a newsocialorder emerges, when a great manyexperiments brieflyflourish. If the experiences of past generations are to furnish any guidance, the best attitude to adopt might havelessto do with picking the most likelysuccessorsto today's institutions than with encouraging an atmosphere of experimentation. IsTed Nelson any crazier than AlanTuring? Did Gutenberg think about the effects of public libraries? Toolsfor Thought is fascinating reading because of its clear and logical structure and because of the wealth of information it sheds on the people who made the machines that we all have sitting in our offices and on our desks at home. Tools for Thought is a wonderful book, well written and thought provoking . Due to the vagaries of the publishing industry, it has not received the attention it deserves until now. 244 Current Literature ARTIFICIAL LIFE By Christopher G. Langton, ed. Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA, U.SA, 1989. 654 pp., illus. Trade, $43.25; paper, $21.50. ISBN: 0-201-0934M; ISBN: 0-201-09356-1. Reviewed by Stephen Wilson, Art Department , San Francisco Stale University, 1600 Holloway, San Francisco, CA 94132, U.S.A. This book documents the proceedings of an extraordinary interdisciplinary workshop on the synthesis and simulation of living systems sponsored by the Center for Non-Linear Systems of the Santa Fe Institute in 1987. The conference brought together 160 computer scientists, biologists, philosophers, physicists, anthropologists and others. Its goal was to study a variety of approaches to the simulation of living systems, artificial life or 'life as it could be'. The participants discussed theory, computer programs to simulate aspects of life, robotics and artificial intelligence. The book includes theoretical and practical papers analyzing the essence of living system simulations, processes of origination of life and evolution, embryology, ecology, intelligence and nanotechnology. The researchers whose papers are included are concerned with creating computer and robotic systems that mimic living organisms or extend beyond known organisms to create new life-like forms. The book's strength is the variety of approaches represented. Its contributors range from researchers who develop these systems to better understand biology, to philosophers who get involved in order to explore basic questions about life and existence . The mix is most stimulating. Samples of papers include "Simulations , Realizations, and Theories of Life", "Cellular Automata, ReactionDiffusion Systems, and the Origin of Life", ''The Artificial Menagerie" and "Modeling Behavior in Petworld", Readers who are unfamiliar with these areas of inquiry may be wondering what this is all about. There is a famous computer game called Life that illustrates a simple example. This game consists of a computer animation that follows simple rules about how graphic blocks interact with neighbors. New blocks are added and old blocks disappear in accordance with these rules and with some degree of randomness. Even with very simple rules, the 'growing' animation resembles the spread of a population of organisms. Different runs of the program end in different results, but the process each time maintains a certain organic similarity to previous runs. Changing the rules results in different growth patterns. The artificial life conference considers more sophisticated computer models for organisms and populations. The editor's summary of the 'distilled essence' of artificial life helps...