User:Tancre/readings/machinic life
Introduction
After world war II, 2 machines:
- computers (reletaed to war & death)
- liminal machine (associated with life) > behaviour of living entities (homeostasis, self-directes action, adaptability, reproduction).
Neither fully alive nor animated but machinic life mirroring the behavior of organic life. Artificial or parallel alternative to life VS biological realm. From cybernetic to ALife.
- Von Neumann - self-reproducing automata
- Shannon - maze-solving mouse
- Ashby - self-organizing homeostat
- Walter - artificial tortoises
- ALife's digital organisms that spawn and mutate
- Smart software agents
- Autonomous mobile robots
Strong theories > not a simple simulation but a realization of life by instantiating and actualizing its principles in another medium or material substrate. Stedealy expanding substrate interconnected with the human world making a machinic phylum VS separation nature/technology.
But eerie and disturbing abstractness > intrinsically alluring
Not exact imitation of life but complexity of behavior 'equal' to simplest natural organisms.
from cybernetic > complexity VS biological hierarchy
Increasing interest in how the interaction of low-level elements, computational primitives produce complex behavior we associate to living systems.
Von Neumann > a self-reproducing automaton capable of evolution will lead to break the complxity barrier
Ashby > complexity from coupling a simple constructed dynamical system
Walter > simple elements and networks, for multiple purposes
Langton, Ray, Adami...
From the successes of ALife > new AI, embed lessons from ALife for complexity in autonomous machines in the material world. Recently, to emulate the complex circuits of information processing in the brain
In cultural and philosophical analysis, diffuse and seldom questioned anthropomorfism. In practice, question of functionality and meaning, framed in mimetic, representional terms. 'Life' as final arbiter: how well they simulate help us to understand their singularity. Simulation gauged on their natural organic counterpart in the lifeworld.
No consensus in biology on the term 'life'. Agreement on 2 basics processes involved: metabolism to extract energy from environment / reproduction with a hereditary mechanism that will evolve adaptations for survival. In synthesis of life: hardware(robotics), software(replicating and evolving computer programs), wetware(replicating and evolving artifical protocells).