From: Bruce Cohen Subject: Synthetic Life (evolving computer worms) (LONG) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 14:50:20 PST With regard to interest in artificial life: I've been interested in this area for some time; I subscribe to the artificial life mailing list which is coordinated by Eric Freeman at the University of Indiana. My original interest had nothing to do with Virtual Reality, just a general interest in topics of theoretical biology and complex systems, but I've since begun to believe that there's significant utility in studying AL from a VR perspective (I think there may be some interest in the other direction, but that's a different discussion). It's my belief that the success of VR on a large scale depends to some extent on developing sharable worlds which are self-maintaining, to as large an extent as possible. One reason is that many users (including me, I suspect) may want there not to be a god in the machine, i.e. that the world they share evolves primarily as a result of the interactions between users rather than by fiat of some system administrator. Another reason is that the easier it is to maintain a world the more worlds there will be to choose from. Artificial life has the potential to give us tools for designing reactive features of virtual worlds, features which change in response to user actions without requiring routine maintaintence simply to perform their normal functions. So I think information of this sort is useful, and should be made available. As usual, the moderator of the VR newsgroup is left with the task of winnowing out the information which is of particular interest from the VR perspective. I'd suggest that people be made aware of the AL mailing list, so those who want more information can get it directly. If you like, I'll post the subscription request info. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Speaker-to-managers, aka Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab email: brucec@tekcrl.labs.tek.com Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503)627-5241 M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077