Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology

By Steven Levy

Book Overview

This enthralling book alerts us to nothing less than the existence of new varieties of life. Some of these species can move and eat, see, reproduce, and die. Some behave like birds or ants. One such life form may turn out to be our best weapon in the war against AIDS. What these species have in common is that they exist inside computers, their DNA is digital, and they have come into being not through God's agency but through the efforts of a generation of scientists who seek to create life in silico. But even as it introduces us to these brilliant heretics and unravels the intricacies of their work. Artificial Life examines its subject's dizzying philosophical implications: Is a self-replicating computer program any less alive than a flu virus? Are carbon-and-water-based entities merely part of the continuum of living things? And is it possible that one day "a-life" will look back at human beings and dismiss us as an evolutionary way station -- or, worse still, a dead end?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679743898
• ISBN13: 9780679743897
• Release Date: July 1993
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

fascinating

I read this more than three years ago, before I started my undergraduate studies. I knew I was going to study computer science, but after reading this book I knew I would forever be drawn to the multidisciplinary fields of biology and computer science. From the question of the origin of life to intelligence, the book convinced me that a new approach is needed to solve these old mysteries.It's not a masterpiece of literature, but it was interesting enough to forever change my research career.

Foundations of Alife

This is an extremely well written survey of the entire field of Alife. It's the best general introduction to Alife in print and I expect it shall be in print for quite some time.

Excellent Introduction To Artificial Life

This book is a quick read and a great introduction to artificial life. It combines something of the science, the personalities and the history of this field. For general readers with some technical sophistication it affords an opportunity to broaden one's horizons without too much of a mathematical stretch; for computer scientists who are thinking of their own research it can give a general idea of some of the accomplishments in the field and a place to start delving into the original research papers. Read it and enjoy the future!

Excellent - absorbing and approachable thought food.

This book is a terrific introduction and overview to the field of artificial life. Not to be at all confused with the more mundane "artificial intellgence", AL is the quest to create something that can be considered to be sentient within a computer system. Great reading for everyone, not just the technically literate, on a subject that I believe will become one of the great issues and debates of the 21st century.

You may never think of life in the same way again.

Levy presents a fascinating roundup of the state of the art in this new field of computer science, complete with interviews with some colorful personalities and their pet projects. A must for cyberculture groupies and followers of cutting-edge thought. --Richard Brodie, author, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Mem