ARTIFICIAL LIFE. The Quest for a New Creation.

by Steven Levy

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 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?

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Technology, Biology, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Computers

Paperback

First published May 30, 1992

About the author

Steven Levy is editor at large at Wired, and author of eight books, including the new Facebook: the Inside Story, the definitive history of that controversial company. His previous works include the legendary computer history Hackers, Artificial Life, the Unicorn 's Secret, In the Plex (the story of Google, chose as Amazon and Audible's best business book of 2011), and Crypto, which won the Frankfurt E-book Award for the best non-fiction book of 2001. He was previously the chief technology correspondent for Newsweek. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, the book responsible for a strange little diversion in my life. There I was, a 19 year old first year linguistics student, when I borrowed this book from my mathematics student flatmate. And I thought - "this is really interesting, how can I get into it?" and ended up - someone who hadn't programmed a computer in my life - switching to study artificial intelligence. Which led some years later to working as a programmer in a chaotically run start-up as the dotcom boom petered out... An experience I still think I ought to be able to get a book out of somehow.

But anyway, enough of that. I don't know how this book has aged, but at the time, I found its overview of the point where computer science and biology met inspiring - and to judge from others I spoke to on that course, I wasn't alone in having my interest sparked by this book.

[Ilknur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating read but quite outdated

[Michiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relatively old, though still stimulating and relevant!

[Barrysmyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book when I first read it in the early 90’s as a naive undergrad. It’s discoloured pages called out to me from a bookshelf rarely visited these days, and I’m glad I listened to its call. This book has stayed with me for nearly 30 years and even today it still managed to recreate the excitement and bullish ambition that characterised those formative years in my computer science journey. I loved re-reading about those early tentative but bold experiments in CAs, GAs, auto-catalytic nets, L-systems, classifier systems, boids and more. The sheer force of will that these early a-life pioneers possessed is a pleasure to re-live.

Maybe its the inevitable nostalgia that goes with lockdown fatigue, but this is one of those books that reminded me of the wide-eyed excitement that computer science still holds for me, even today, almost 40 years after my very first ‘Hello World’.

Highly recommended.

[Sourav Kulkarni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brushed through. Need to read it again.

[Clemens Lode · Rating 5 out of 5]

While already quite dated, this book gives a great and very exciting introduction into artificial life without going too much into details. It is written for beginners with no background in computer science---although it helps to have a general idea of how computers work.

It is written comprehensively with descriptions about the history of the development of the scientific field “artificial life”. The contents of the book range from the history of Artificial Life, to “Game of Life”, swarm behavior, ant colonies, cellular automata, gaming strategies, hill-climbing strategies, VENUS and TIERRA simulators, and 'real' artificial life, i.e. robots. All in all superb 😄

[George Higgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting read. I am interested in Artificial Intelligence, not a good title since I make little distinction between thinking devices made of proteins and those made of other material, except that the protein made thinking devices have been in development for a long time and are vastly superior in many ways to the others. This book takes complexity seriously, so it is a good read for me.

[Wael Al-alwani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book 3 years ago.. it is definitely amongst the best popular-science books I read. As the name implies, this book talks about computer algorithms inspired from biology, cell programming, in silico, and much more interesting stuff.

[Gogs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as it was suggested as a good introduction to Artificial Intelligence, however whilst there is elements of AI mentioned it primarily focuses, as the title suggests, on Life.

Nevertheless, a good read albeit at times a hard slog for those like me that are not overly scientific

[Brent Werness · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very formative book for me on my path to becoming a mathematician. I read it when I was in 4th grade, and it completely boggled my youthful mind. No clue how it holds up now 20 years later, but it gets 5 stars for the memory.

[Chris Feldman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allegedly one of Oshii's inspirations for the Ghost In The Shell series.

[Hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really two-and-a-half stars. A light-weight overview of efforts to build 'reproducing' computer programs. The author admits even any-type behavior will not be possible for years.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book about people trying to create "intelligence" in software.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, imagination-stirring book I read back in my comp sci days.

[K. P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book. Levy's exposition is very clear, and his storytelling is intriguing. I couldn't put it down.

[Facedeer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dated in light of recent advances, the book is 20 years old now, but still a nice summary of ideas in the field.

[Tim Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't exactly read this book, but I did dip into it and it was very interesting.