Exploring emergence, persistence, learning, inheritance and evolution in computational systems.
Can life-like behaviour emerge from computation alone?
This book starts with the smallest possible systems — state, local interaction and time — and progressively asks harder questions about persistence, information, regeneration, learning, inheritance and cumulative improvement.
The rule throughout is simple:
we do not claim a life-like property until we can demonstrate and measure it.
Before we learn how artificial life works, look at what a few local rules can already produce.
Read chapter →Strip digital life down to a line of binary cells, a three-cell neighborhood and one tiny deterministic rule.
Read chapter →Change one rule number and watch a tiny deterministic system become unexpectedly difficult to predict.
Read chapter →Use Conway's Game of Life to ask whether a persistent moving pattern deserves to be treated as an entity.
Read chapter →Damage persistent digital patterns and separate survival, robustness and regeneration into experimentally distinct claims.
Read chapter →