Creation - Life and How to Make It (Paperback)

'Life has always been an ineffable mystery and many people understandably prefer to keep it that way,' writes Grand. However, if you'd rather find out how some of the cogs work, read on. This book offers a lucid and timely exposition of artificial life, written by the former programmer who wrote the bestselling computer game 'Creatures'. 'I am an aspiring, latter day Baron Frankenstein,' admits Grand. 'Like him, I believe that life can be created where there was none before. Like him, I think that it is possible to make thinking, caring, feeling beings and that, when these beings exist, it may be reasonable to ascribe to them a soul. Like him, this is what I have set out to do.' The book goes on to describe and to examine, in chapters dealing with concepts such as illusions, 'nudge and cajole', the topology of mind-space, and vapourware, just how our thinking may be shaped in the future. Grand has already set foot in this world with his game 'Creatures', and in chapter 11 of his book, he unveils some of the secrets of its creation. He admits there is still a long way to go in making autonomous and intelligent beings, let alone conscious ones, but that does not prevent him from grappling solidly with some of the fundamental questions of life; from material, practical and social through to philosophical issues. Early in the book, he writes: 'Frankenstein's terribly and ultimately fatal mistake was to carry out the act of creation first and to think about the consequences afterwards...So far, my faltering attempts to create life have only increased my admiration for it.' Like Richard Dawkins, to whom Grand pays tribute, he has an irritating tendency to sneer a the transcendent rather than admit there are some mysteries which he will never crack. Nevertheless, the book remains a fascinating, brilliant read. (Kirkus UK)

Working mostly alone, almost single-handedly writing 250,000 lines of computer code, Steve Grand produced "Creatures"(R), a revolutionary computer game that allowed players to create living beings complete with brains, genes, and hormonal systems--creatures that would live and breathe and breed in real time on an ordinary desktop computer. Enormously successful, the game inevitably raises the question: What is artificial life? And in this book--a chance for the devoted fan and the simply curious onlooker to see the world from the perspective of an original philosopher-engineer and intellectual maverick--Steve Grand proposes an answer.

From the composition of the brains and bodies of artificial life forms to the philosophical guidelines and computational frameworks that define them, "Creation" plumbs the practical, social, and ethical aspects and implications of the state of the art. But more than that, the book gives readers access to the insights Grand acquired in writing "Creatures"--insights that yield a view of the world that is surprisingly antireductionist, antimaterialist, and (to a degree) antimechanistic, a view that sees matter, life, mind, and society as simply different levels of the same thing. Such a hierarchy, Grand suggests, can be mirrored by an equivalent one that exists inside a parallel universe called cyberspace.

General

Imprint:	Harvard University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	May 2003
First published:	2000
Authors:	Steve Grand
Dimensions:	228 x 151 x 14mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	230
ISBN-13:	978-0-674-01113-7
Categories:	Books Promotions
LSN:	0-674-01113-9
Barcode:	9780674011137

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