Product Description
Tinker with the processes governing life and evolution. The Bugland A-Life program for Windows contains animated icons and Sound Blaster-compatible sound. As a silicon geneticist, the user can design creatures and see them give birth, fight, breed and perish through the 3-D glasses provided. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Okay, but...
I recently read this book and worked with the programs. Although it's a bit dated, I don't think the core basics have changed much. I like the author's visionary style, and the concept behind the book and accompanying software program; i.e. to give intermediate computer users an intro to artifical life via cellular automata.However, I was confused in the second chapter by some hazy explanations in computation examples, and a few apparent typo's in the Turing machine programming code examples - not too cool.This unnecessary situation caused me to waste time by having to read the chapter twice, and more slowly.Other than that, a stimulating book. ... Read more

Product Description
Artificial life is now a recognized discipline of research with many important applications and software tools. However, many theoretical issues remain unresolved. This book brings together a cross-section of key developments in artificial life, which in turn gives us new insight into the theory of complex systems.The central ideas of the book surround genetics and evolution in an artificial life framework. Topics covered include maintenance of genetic diversity, hierarchical structures and stability of ecosystems. Underpinning these topics are key theoretical developments surrounding network complexity, the development of pattern languages for complex networks and a deeper understanding of the edge of chaos where complex systems live. Practical applications include optimization, gene regulatory networks, modeling the spread of disease and the evolution of ageing.The reader will gain an insight into the mathematical techniques at the core of artificial life and encounter a sufficient diversity of applications to stimulate new directions in their own field. ... Read more

Product Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL'99, held in Lausanne, Switzerland in September 1999. The 90 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 150 submissions. The book presents the state of the art in ALife research. It is divided in topical sections on epistemology; evolutionary cybernetics; bio-inspired robotics and autonomous agents; self-replication, self-maintenance, and gene expression; societies and collective behavior; and communication and language. ... Read more

Product Description
Are the combined human resources at ARTIFICIAL LIFE, INC. productive?There is no absolute answer to this question. This report considers the extent to which the company's labor deployment indicators differ from global benchmarks.In this report we consider forecasts of differences between labor ratios and the resulting return on this human investment compared to global benchmarks; the estimation of such differences is commonly called a "gap analysis."What is the ratio of short-term and long-term assets to employee?What are typical capital-labor ratios?How different are these ratios to companies serving the same link in the value chain? What are the average sales and net profits per employee compared to global benchmarks?These and over 50 other indicators of labor productivity are considered in this report.The report does so by going beyond traditional analyses by considering companies competing in the same or similar industrial classification at a global level.The goal of this report, therefore, is to assist consultants, human resource managers, strategic planners, and corporate officers in gauging estimates of a company's human resource indicators compared to firms competing or participating in the same economic sector, at the global level.This report is not about whether a particular company or industry has performed well or poorly in the past or will do so in the future.With the globalization of markets, greater foreign competition, and the reduction of entry barriers, it becomes all the more important to benchmark a company's human resource indicators against other firms on a worldwide basis.Doing so, however, is not an obvious task.First, one needs to find firms competing in the same sector, but not necessarily competing directly with the company in local markets.These firms should not be perceived, therefore, to be direct competitors to the company in question, but simply those that have been classified by various sources (e.g. EDGAR or similar foreign filings), as competing to serve customers in the same link of the value chain, or broad industrial classification, as identified by SIC, NAICS or similar codes. Second, given the international nature of the task, one needs to control for exchange rate volatility.Finally, one needs use comparable financial standards.This report overcomes these issues and gives full human resources benchmarks vis-a-vis worldwide competitors who are present in the same narrow industrial classification. Benchmarks cover labor-asset ratios, labor-liability ratios, and labor-income ratios.Since our reports are printed on demand, the statistics reported are for the latest quarter and are the most up to date available (4 updates are produced each year). Each report provides over 100 statistics and 40 graphs to the reader.This reports is on ARTIFICIAL LIFE, INC., BOSTON, USA. ... Read more

Product Description
This book applies complexity theory to cognitive science, and the result is a transformation of this field. It proposes a biophysical theory of human relations, attempting to expand all its implications (for research and theory). It presents the potential clinical applications of this theory in neuroscience and clinical psychology — a general theory of mind change. ... Read more

Product Description
Harmless artificial life forms are on the loose on the Internet. Computer viruses and even robots are now able to evolve like their biological counterparts. Telecommunications companies are sending small packets of software to go forth and multiply to cope with ever-increasing telephone traffic. Protein-based computers are on the agenda, and a team in Japan is building an organic brain as clever as a kitten. Welcome to the startling world of Artificial Life.

Artificial Life scientists are taking inanimate materials such as computer software and robots and making them behave just like living organisms. In the process they are discovering much about what drives evolution and just what it means to say that something is alive. Virtual Organisms traces the origins of this field from the days when it was practiced by a few maverick scientists to the present and the current boom in Alife research.

Leading technology correspondent Mark Ward presents a fascinating survey of current ideas about the origins of life and the engines of evolution. Through interviews with leading developers of Artificial Life, and through his own compelling research, Ward shows how the convergence of technology with biology has enormous implications.

In an accessible, entertaining manner, Virtual Organisms reveals an unexplored avenue in predicting the future of Artificial Life , and whether new forms of Alife may be evolving beyond their designer's control.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Enter�Inorganic Life
This book is an interesting survey of progress in using intelligent computer programs like cellular automata to replace older, more rigid programs.Ward attempts to redefine life as the passing of information.He concludes that "the informational basis of life can be abstracted away from the bodies we find it in and lose nothing in the process."

He wants to attribute "life" to both organic and inorganic species, thus his title.He moves by steps to show that the quality of human life is no more special than the life of plants, birds, mammals, insects, algae and fish.Although man has advantages with manipulating symbols, other life forms are superior as receptors of smells (ants and dogs) and gravitational maps (salmon and migrating birds).Ward wants the reader to accept the idea that there is nothing any more special about human life than there is about ant life.In fact many of the Artificial Life programs were inspired by ant behavior.All life becomes a matter of processing information.

Most of the examples given were in the field of telecommunications, network switching.Parallels were drawn between the information passed in DNA replication and that passed by computer programs.The groups he discusses are endeavoring to breed software in an evolutionary manner analogous to breeding animal life.To his thinking a string of computer bits are agents analogous to a string of amino acids in the chromosome of living agents-interesting ideas.

An Excellent Introductory Text
I have to disagree with many of the other reviewers that have commented on this text as I feel that it provides an excellent introduction to the field of Artificial Life. Any reader who picks up a 'penguin' style softback book with a jazzy cover running to no more than a couple of hundred pages and expects entensive algorthmic listings has little or no experience of printed IT literature. Bearing in mind the limitations imposed upon the author by the parameters of this work, this text provides an excellent theoretical perpective of the field free from the restrictive and time consuming portrayal of endless lines of coding that some reviewers would prefer to see. This is not a technical manual and does not purport to be, it is an excellent introductory text designed for those who use computers and are not used by them.

Annoying, boring
The first entire chapter is just an annoying and unconvincing lecture on evolution that has, from what I can see, nothing to do with the book.The rest seems to be nothing but a history lecture on the people that researched and developed the concepts of digital DNA, cellular automa (Like Conway's game of life) etc...The history was mildly amusing, but without getting very technical, the author lost my intrest soon.

Wonderful book for the rest of us.
Another book from an English writer that covers the subject of information in living organisms.This follows on the subject covered in "The Bit and the Pendulum" about the DNA and RNA using digital code in the process of reproduction.Nerds are not invited to read the book. English writers seem to stay away from the Hype and let us in on Memes and Genes and present research on psychology in a methodical manner that references wide ranging thinking and writing such as this one does.

Not recommended
The book description states, "...Mark Ward presents a fascinating survey..." but the book does not even come close to remotely interesting.The cover art, title, and book description are the highlights of this book, anything beyond that is an extremely dry read.

I am surprised that such an interesting subject could be transformed into such a boring lecture.The first 60 pages is dedicated to a tedious review of basic evolution which has become common knowledge.Only later, after losing the readers' interest, does Ward begin to tie this in with the actual subject of the book, artificial life.Yet even when he gets to artificial life, programming codes are not included in the book, so don't even think about it.It's as if Ward were a humanities major writing an extremely tiresome thesis on artificial life.

The only saving grace is the actual subject--even Ward cannot completely dampen the fascinating experiments with his stilted prose.Someone interested in doing a book report on the history of organismal life to artificial life may want to give Ward a try--anyone else familiar with the subject of A life should avoid this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Working mostly alone, almost single-handedly writing 250,000 lines of computer code, Steve Grand produced Creatures®, a revolutionary computer game that allowed players to create living beings complete with brains, genes, and hormonal systems--creatures that would live and breathe and breed in real time on an ordinary desktop computer. Enormously successful, the game inevitably raises the question: What is artificial life? And in this book--a chance for the devoted fan and the simply curious onlooker to see the world from the perspective of an original philosopher-engineer and intellectual maverick--Steve Grand proposes an answer.

From the composition of the brains and bodies of artificial life forms to the philosophical guidelines and computational frameworks that define them, Creation plumbs the practical, social, and ethical aspects and implications of the state of the art. But more than that, the book gives readers access to the insights Grand acquired in writing Creatures--insights that yield a view of the world that is surprisingly antireductionist, antimaterialist, and (to a degree) antimechanistic, a view that sees matter, life, mind, and society as simply different levels of the same thing. Such a hierarchy, Grand suggests, can be mirrored by an equivalent one that exists inside a parallel universe called cyberspace.Amazon.com Review
Though its title brings to mind the hubris of Frankenstein, Steve Grand's Creation: Life and How to Make It is just humble enough to keep its readers hooked. Best known as the developer of the Creatures series of artificial-life software, Grand has quite a following among devotees of playful complexity.

The book ranges from deep ruminations on the nature of life and mind (artificial and biological) to fairly concrete advice for future creators, and his writing is just as elegant and compelling as his software. Sometimes his cleverness gets the best of him, but for the most part, his wordplay is used to serve his ideas, which are thought-provoking even for readers who have no intention of creating life.

Many will be surprised at the strength of Grand's antireductionism, but he makes his case vigorously and may win a few converts to the emergent-phenomena camp. Creation is essential reading for those of us who want to think through the consequences of our actions before we imitate Frankenstein's mistake. --Rob Lightner ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Interesting concepts
Steve Grand's introduction to artificial life for the non-scientist is nothing if not an interesting read. While he may go out on an intellectual limb from time to time, he does put forth a convincing, and somewhat radical, definition of what constitutes life.I was quite impressed with his approach to creating a synthetic life form.Rather than just attempting to animate a cartoon with a limited repertoire of behaviors, he practically starts at the sub-atomic level.From there he builds his creatures molecule by molecule, system by system until he has a credible model of what an artificial living being might be like. This guy is thorough!My only disappointment was that he expended this amount of well directed thought and work to create "creatures" that look like they were designed for a kids' Saturday morning cartoon.They could have been so much cooler...

Some good parts, but patchy
There are some interesting analogies and examples of perceived or emergent behaviour but overall many of the arguments do not hold up to scrutiny. If you are looking for a book written in the form of opinions, as opposed to hard facts, then this book will be more to your liking. Certainly something I would borrow from a friend/library rather than paying for it to sit on my shelf - not something I will go back to in future to read again or for reference. It was a disappointment as I was led to it from Richard Dawkins' excellent "The God Delusion".

heavy material...
This book gives a very deep insight in the problems of the creation of systems with some intelligence.

Disappointing & unenlightening
I seldom pan books, but this one is little more than an egotistic rehash of simplified versions of AI/AL theories of the past 3 decades. The only new data are the author's opinions. If you are looking for anything new and/or in depth, look elsewhere.

Turning the tide on AI research in a sense
I must say I enjoyed the book completely. While I don't agree with the author on all points - the book is incredibly thought provoking. I was so glad to see such a book written that after I read the book (in 3 nights - short book) I bought three copies for co-workers who I wanted to read it. Steve Grand is now quite famous (or should I say even more famous) after writing this book. He has challenged traditional thought on the subject of AI and in a way that has made converts out of many.

However, he spends 10 chapters saying "you are all wrong - this is the way to do it" - then doesn't follow up on doing it himself but rather takes enough shortcuts to make the work suspect - but to his credit he does say he's doing going just that :) All in all - if you're a software engineer or software developer I highly recommended the book. ... Read more

Product Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Symposium on Knowledge Exploration in Life Science Informatics, KELSI 2004, held in Milan, Italy in November 2004.

The 20 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Among the topics covered are proteomic data analysis, rule induction, multiple sequence alignment, pattern extraction, microarray analysis, functional data analysis, text mining, artificial life, evolutionary algorithms, randomized algorithms, feature extraction, classification, case-based learning, and bioscience education.

Product Description
The technology which once produced the first synthetic human today includes the simulation of human behaviour processes, associated with consciousness and the emotions. When a computer creates artificial life, its synthetic creatures demonstrate the behaviour patterns of real living beings. This book investigates the technological advances which allow artificial life to be placed within a virtual setting, where the human user can meet and interact with synthetic beings—people, animals or plants—in a complete simulation of the real world. It introduces new concepts such as artificial consciousness, artificial presence, artificial autonomy and artificial perception; and discusses important results in the development of immersive and auditory virtual environments, and co-operative work. ... Read more

Product Description
An exploration of the implications of developments in artificial intelligence for social scientific research, which builds on the theoretical and methodological insights provided by "Simulating societies".; This book is intended for worldwide library market for social science subjects such as sociology, political science, geography, archaeology/anthropology, and significant appeal within computer science, particularly artificial intelligence. Also personal reference for researchers. ... Read more

Product Description
An exciting exploration of how complexity theory is answering all of our questions about evolution and might even show us how life developed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

for the Biology Scientist who wants to make computer models
This book is a must for the Biology scientist knowing a little about computers and how they work, if you want to study the Evolution and nature of life on a computer. I found it so overwhelming that I decided to become a Biology scientist and focus my life on making simulations of the Evolution of Life by making computer models. So many things to discover!So little time!

Computers and evolution
I am writing review this because a previous review may mislead some people. This book does not claim to deal with Artificial Life; instead, computers are used to provide a better understanding of life's processes,especially evolution. Given that this is the stated objective of theauthor, the book is excellent, well written, and rich with examples.

Ihave purchased multiple copies of this book because I have "loaned" mycopies to people interested in computational evolution. When I leaveadministration, I would like to teach a course in evolution, and if it isnot too far in the future, I will require this book as outside reading.

Computers and evolution
I am writing review this because a previous review may mislead some people. This book does not claim to deal with Artificial Life; instead, computers are used to provide a better understanding of life's processes,especially evolution. Given that this is the stated objective of theauthor, the book is excellent, well written, and rich with examples.

Ihave purchased multiple copies of this book because I have "loaned" mycopies to people interested in computational evolution. When I leaveadministration, I would like to teach a course in evolution, and if it isnot too far in the future, I will require this book as outside reading.

misleading title
This book is a superficial discussion of evolution on earth, not artificial life. The actual content on artificial life and agents would make a mediocre and short magazine article. This book brings out theshortcommings of buying a book online because less than five minutes in abookstore aisle would reveal the uselessness of this book. ... Read more

Product Description
An introduction to the coming revolution in art, technology, media, chemistry, science, and music discusses amino chemistry, manotechnology, high-tech paganism, teledildonics, and more.$75,000 ad/promo. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Window on an era
First off, I hope the seller's name appears linked to this review because they totally misrepresented the condition. It was disgustingly spattered with gawd-knows-what which had to be removed with rubbing alcohol before I could touch it without getting queasy. The corners were dog-eared, actually folded inside for several pages and it had obviously been dropped.

Fortunately this didn't affect the content which was a trippy visit to Bezerkeley during the era when the internet was just beginning, smart drugs, raves, Burroughs, Leary, hacking as a noble endeavor and "that whole scene." It's also amusing to compare the predictions in various articles with the reality today.

The year was 1992 and there was a future of techno-shamen, raves, and cyberpunk computing
Instead we got Windows 95, AOL users on the Internet, LinkedIn, and the RIAA/MPAA lawsuits. Oh yeah, and this book is still around. It probably looked dated to the folks in the offset printing factory, but it's a fun, colorful, vibrantly funky dated. It's a great read of the late, somewhat lamented, Mondo 2000 crowd.

90's nostalgia
This book was a very fun find for me, especially as I live in a more rural area and missed a lot of the "Cyberculture" including most of Mondo 2000's run...Oh, well...

I really liked reading from it, and even now it would be worth a look.

If you read mondo 2000, there are no surprises here, but...
If you have read Mondo 2000 before, then nothing in this book will be much of a surprise.In fact in 1998 this book is clearly retro.Still, to the new reader you will find much of the information interesting.The format is basically an A-Z of popular memes and cultural phenomena with a pseudo hypertext interface.
High gloss and flashy.Suitable for a coffee table, but you might want to keep it on your reference shelf.

Very '1990' look at the future
A very 1990 look at the future, but well done withgood graphics. Covers music, fashion, Industry,etc. ... Read more

Product Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, SAB 2008, held in Osaka, Japan in July 2008.

The 30 revised full papers and 21 revised poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 110 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on the animat approach to adaptive behaviour, evolution, navigation and internal world models, perception and control, learning and adaptation, cognition, emotion and behaviour, collective and social behaviours, adaptive behaviour in language and communication, and applied adaptive behaviour.

Product Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, SAB 2006, held in Rome, Italy in September 2006.

The 35 revised full papers and 35 revised poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 140 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on the animat approach to adaptive behaviour, perception and motor control, action selection and behavioral sequences, navigation and internal world models, learning and adaptation, evolution, collective and social behaviours, adaptive behavior in language and communication, and applied adaptive behavior.

Product Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence, ICAT 2006, held in Hangzhou, China in November/December 2006.

The 138 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 523 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on anthropomorphic intelligent robotics, artificial life, augmented reality, mixed reality, distributed and collaborative VR system, haptics, human factors of VR, innovative applications of VR, motion tracking, real time computer simulation, tools and technique for modeling VR systems, ubiquitous/wearable computing, virtual heritage, virtual medicine and health science, virtual reality, as well as VR interaction and navigation techniques.

Product Description

The two volumes LNCS 4688 and LNBI 4689 constitute the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Life System Modeling and Simulation, LSMS 2007, held in Shanghai, China, in September 2007.

The 147 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 1383 submissions. The 63 papers of LNCS 4689 are organized in topical sections on modeling and simulation of societies and collective behavior, computational methods and intelligence in biomechanical systems, tissue engineering and clinical bioengineering, computational intelligence in bioinformatics and biometrics, brain stimulation, neural dynamics and neural interfacing, biological and biomedical data integration, mining and visualization, computational methods and intelligence in organism modeling and biochemical networks and regulation, computational methods and intelligence in modeling of molecular, cellular , multi-cellular behavior and design of synthetic biological systems, and others.

Product Description

The two volumes LNCS 4688 and LNBI 4689 constitute the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Life System Modeling and Simulation, LSMS 2007, held in Shanghai, China, in September 2007.

The 147 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 1383 submissions. The 84 papers of LNCS 4688 are organized in topical sections on advanced neural network theory, algorithms and application, advanced evolutionary computing theory, algorithms and application, ant colonies and particle swarm optimization and application, fuzzy, neural, fuzzy-neuro hybrids and application, intelligent modeling, monitoring, and control of complex nonlinear systems, as well as biomedical signal processing, imaging and visualization.

Product Description
This volume contains thoroughly refereed versions of the best papers presented at the 4th European Workshop on Modelling Automomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World, held July 29 - 31, 1992 in S. Martino al Cimino, Italy.
The book opens with an introductory survey by the volume editors not only on the collection of papers but also on the history and present situation of Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and its interdisciplinary relations to social sciences, artificial life, and economics. The 19 technical papers are organized into sections on artificial life and reactive systems, economics and game theory, coordination and multi-agent planning, and DAI tools and applications. ... Read more