Beta-Life: Stories from an A-Life Future

Computers are changing. Soon, the days of silicon-based logic-gate computing will seem like a quaint and distant memory from a charmingly clunky past. Likewise, robots–once designed by mere mortals–will be soon be devised solely by the ultimate designing agency, evolution (with the help of computer modeling of natural selection). Meanwhile, A-Life (artificial life) and mathematical biomimicry–algorithm-based virtual models that map the collective intelligence of nature onto manmade systems–will become as big as genetics is right now. What this future will look like, exactly, is beyond even the scientists. But this book attempts to start the process of imagining it, by pairing researchers at the cutting edge of A-Life and Unconventional Computing with some of the most exciting writers working in English.