Part 1: Introductions and General Questions
* Q1: What is Artificial Life, and where is some introductory material?
* Q2: What is the purpose and charter of comp.ai.alife?
* Q3: How do I find/compile a particular AL program/demo?
- General info on finding and compiling AL programs.
- Tom Ray's Tierra.
- Karl Sim's movie from SIGGRAPH/ALIFE IV.
- Craig Reynolds' boids simulation.
* Q4: How are Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence related?
* Q5: Where is this newsgroup archived?
* Q6: Where can I get a doctorate in Artificial Life or related areas?
* Q7: Where can I find information on simulating or developing the mechanics
of locomotion?
* Q8: I'm interested in reading up on evolutionary biology. Where do I start?
* Q9: I'm looking for a particular mailing list. Does it exist, and if so,
how do I find it?
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Q1: What is Artificial Life, and where is some introductory material?
What is Artificial Life?
------------------------
Biology is the scientific study of life - in principle, anyway. In
practice, biology is the scientific study of life on Earth based on
carbon-chain chemistry. There is nothing in its charter that restricts
biology to carbon-based life; it is simply that this is the only kind
of life that has been available to study. Thus, theoretical biology
has long faced the fundamental obstacle that it is impossible to
derive general principles from single examples.
Without other examples, it is difficult to distinguish essential
properties of life - properties that would be shared by any living
system - from properties that may be incidental to life in principle,
but which happen to be universal to life on Earth due solely to a
combination of local historical accident and common genetic descent.
In order to derive general theories about life, we need an ensemble
of instances to generalize over. Since it is quite unlikely that alien
lifeforms will present themselves to us for study in the near future,
our only option is to try to create alternative life-forms ourselves -
Artificial Life - literally ``life made by Man rather than by
Nature.''
Artificial Life (``AL'' or ``Alife'') is the name given to a new
discipline that studies "natural" life by attempting to recreate
biological phenomena from scratch within computers and other
"artificial" media. Alife complements the traditional analytic
approach of traditional biology with a synthetic approach in which,
rather than studying biological phenomena by taking apart living
organisms to see how they work, one attempts to put together systems
that behave like living organisms.
The process of synthesis has been an extremely important tool in many
disciplines. Synthetic chemistry - the ability to put together new
chemical compounds not found in nature - has not only contributed
enormously to our theoretical understanding of chemical phenomena, but
has also allowed us to fabricate new materials and chemicals that are
of great practical use for industry and technology.
Artificial life amounts to the practice of ``synthetic biology'' and,
by analogy with synthetic chemistry, the attempt to recreate
biological phenomena in alternative media will result in not only
better theoretical understanding of the phenomena under study, but
also in practical applications of biological principles in the
technology of computer hardware and software, mobile robots,
spacecraft, medicine, nanotechnology, industrial fabrication and
assembly, and other vital engineering projects.
By extending the horizons of empirical research in biology beyond the
territory currently circumscribed by life-as-we-know-it, the study of
Artificial Life gives us access to the domain of life-as-it- could-be,
and it is within this vastly larger domain that we must ground general
theories of biology and in which we will discover practical and useful
applications of biology in our engineering endeavors.
-- Chris G. Langton
Where can I find some good introductory material?
-------------------------------------------------
There are several "popular science" books out there. _Artificial Life:
the Quest for a New Creation_, by Steven Levy, was one of the first;
Levy presents a large amount of material detailing the genesis of the
field, including a description of many still-active projects. This
would be my first recommendation for a newcomer.
There is a World-Wide-Web page for this book at the URL
http://mosaic.echonyc.com/~steven/ArtificialLife.html.
M. Mitchell Waldrop's _Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of
Order and Chaos_ (ISBN 0-671-76789-5) discusses the history of complex
systems study. In specific, it details the founding of the Santa Fe
Institute, which is actively researching most aspects of complex systems,
including Artificial Life.
Rudy Rucker's _Artificial Life Lab_ has been recommended as a good way to
get involved; a short review (by Wally Raisanen) is available on the
FAQ-resources Web page, http://www.krl.caltech.edu/~brown/alife/.
Finally, the book _Out of Control_ by Kevin Kelly is an *excellent*
1994 overview of technology, with an emphasis on emergent behavior and
modelling life in a computer environment. A must-read for those
interested in the social impact of our work, as well as those interested
in a general cross-section of the entire field and related areas.
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Q2: What is the purpose and charter of the comp.ai.alife newsgroup?
The purpose of comp.ai.alife is to provide an unmoderated forum in which
to discuss topics related to the field of Artificial Life, as well as
providing a centralized resource base for queries regarding AL research.
* Topics for discussion in the newsgroup can include, but not be limited to:
-- optimization techniques (such as genetic algorithms) and modelling
algorithms
-- the definition of a living system and "Life"
-- self-organizing systems
-- the origin of life
-- evolutionary learning
-- the development of ecosystems
-- complex system dynamics (with specific relation to living systems)
-- book and software reviews (non-commercial advertisements, as well)
Contact brown@krl.caltech.edu for the Request-For-Discussions posted to
news.announce.newgroups.
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Q3: How do I find/compile a particular AL program/demo?
There are three good ways to find a particular AL program or demo:
1) Look at the list below, which contains references to some frequently
requested programs and demos.
2) The World Wide Web resource of 'ZOOland', available at the WWW URL
http://research.germany.eu.net:8080/public/zooland/ or off of
the Artificial Life Resources WWW page mentioned above.
3) Asking on the newsgroup. Even if the people from the particular
project don't actually read the newsgroup, someone who knows
them probably does...
Send questions about compilation (e.g. how do I compile tierra on XXX) to
the author of the package, not to the newsgroup. The author's address should
be included with the package; if it's not, then it's likely an unsupported
package. In addition, there are quite a few topical newsgroups for specific
platform; e.g. comp.unix.osf.osf1 for DEC OSF/1 questions. These are likely
more helpful places to ask specific questions about platforms.
How do I find...
----------------
1. Tierra
The complete source code and documentation (NOT the executables)
for Tom Ray's tierra program are available via anonymous FTP at
ftp://alife.santafe.edu [ 192.12.12.130 ]
ftp://tierra.slhs.udel.edu [ 128.175.41.34 ] and
ftp://life.slhs.udel.edu [ 128.185.41.33 ]
in the directory /SOFTWARE/Tierra, file tierra.tar.Z. Tom Ray does
not permit the executables to any version of tierra to be freely distributed;
contact him at the e-mail address ray@santafe.edu for more information.
2. Karl Sim's movie (from the ALIFE IV conference)
Karl Sim's movie, presented at the ALIFE IV conference, is apparently
not available. However, the SIGGRAPH movie, which shows some of the same
work, is available via FTP at:
ftp://ftp.think.com/users/karl/
3. More information on Craig Reynold's "boids" simulation?
Craig Reynold's "boids" simulation, presented at the ARTIFICIAL LIFE
conference in 1987, has a page at the WWW address:
http://reality.sgi.com/employees/craig/boids.html
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Q4: How are Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence related?
There is a connection between the two fields in both methodology and
research. AI is much older, with conceptual work dating to 1950 and
earlier, while AL coagulated in the late 1980s, when people recognized
similarities in the work they were doing. AI methodologies play a
large part in AL work, partly because of the recognizable similarities
in the two disciplines: AI studying intelligence, AL studying life,
both with an eye to usefulness and reproducibility. And, in recent years,
"traditional" AI researchers have focussed on AL techniques for
autonomous learning, among other things.
In spite of these similarities, there are several dissimilarities.
AL is grounded in biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics,
while AI is pursued mainly by computer scientists, engineers, and
psychologists. Also, the general philosophy of researchers in the fields
seems to approach similar problems from different sides; AL from the
ground up, in an attempt to study synthesis, AI from the top down,
focussing on results and not implementation.
[ The text above is my opinion; I welcome alternative viewpoints on the
subject, of course. --Titus ]
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Q5: Where is this newsgroup archived?
comp.ai.alife is archived weekly at the CMU CS archive site;
ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/ai/pub/news/comp.ai.alife/
Contact ai+news-archives@cs.cmu.edu for more information.
In addition, an HTMLized archive of the newsgroup (and several other
related newsgroups) is available:
http://www.krl.caltech.edu/~brown/alife/news/
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Q6: Where can I get a doctorate in Artificial Life or related areas?
Ben Marcotte (ben@chinook.uoregon.edu) has made a guide available via the WWW:
http://chinook.uoregon.edu/~ben/ga-grad.html
------------------------------
Q7: Where can I find information on simulating or developing the mechanics
of locomotion?
Here are some places to start:
Karl Sims' work with evolving novel "virtual creatures" for tasks
including walking, swimming, jumping and more:
ftp://think.com/users/karl/Welcome.html
The work of Jessica Hodgins et al. building controllers for balanced
locomotion (and other athletic tasks) for "human" characters:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/animation/Animation.html
-- Craig Reynolds (craig@studio.sgi.com)
------------------------------
Q8: I'm interested in reading up on some evolutionary biology. Where
do I start?
Charles Taylor (of UCLA) recommends the following books for people interested
in evolutionary theory:
Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma.
Evolutionary Genetics, by John Maynard Smith.
From the perspective of mathematical modelling:
Theory of population genetics and evolutionary ecology : an
introduction, by Jonathan Roughgarden. ('bit old, but good')
Principles of population genetics, by Daniel L. Hartl and
Andrew G. Clark. ('a class of its own; contains ref. list')