1. A few of the people involved and what they’ve done

2. John Von Neumann Grandfather of modern day computing and of artificial life. The von Neumann Machine. Enjoy. Enjoy.

3. John Conway The Game of Life (solitary two-dimensional cellular automata) The rules (taking place on a matrix): 1) Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, as if caused by under-population. 2).Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation. 3) Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies, as if by overcrowding. 4) Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction. Enjoy

4. Another Conway video video

5. Ed Friedkin “Living things may be soft and squishy, but the basis of life is clearly digital. We don’t know how it works exactly, but instead of computer bits, there’s a four-state code (the four base chemicals that make up DNA and whose sequencing forms the genetic code). And there’s some kind of process that interprets it. It’s obviously some sort of program, running on a digital computer, it’s just that the messages don’t come in form a model, they come from chemicals.”

6. Steven Wolfram A one-dimensional cellular automata rule.

7. The real deal? deal?

8. Try this. this

9. Craig Reynolds BoidsBoids flocking behavior of birds and fish in three dimensions. Also known now as Swarm Intelligence (we’ll get to that later on). Boids

10. James Farmer Within fifty to a hundred years a new class of organisms is likely to emerge. These organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will originally be designed by humans. However, they will reproduce, and will evolve into some- thing other than their original form; they will be “alive” under any reasonable definition of the word....The advent of artificial life will be the most significant historical event since the emergence of human beings....

11. Chris Langton Coined the term Artificial Life and organized the big three conferences at the Los Alamos labs in the late 1980s. Later went to the Santa Few Institute. More here. here. here.

12. Stewart Kaufman Complex systems and self organization.

13. John Holland Creator of genetic algorithms Creator of complex adaptive systems

14. Karl Simms Works at William Hilles’s thinking Machines Corporation. Evolved virtual Creatures. Creatures

15. Thomas Ray TierraTierra. Tierra

16. Aristad Lindenmayer L-systems Crystals Creature