I'm currently reading a pretty good book by that great neo-Darwinian, Richard Dawkins.
I remember him writing in The Blind Watchmaker about an experiment that he intended to do in his garden one summer to see if he could generate computer graphics that attracted insects (just like flowers do). His plan was to take a strict Darwinian approach: display several graphics on the screen then wait for an insect to hit one of them and use the charateristics of that shape for his next generation of patterns. I never did hear how he got on with this.
Now this guy is doing something similar but another step removed from the natural world. He's trying to generate beautiful poetry by natural selection (where people like you and me are the natural selectors). As I write, he's got through four generations and the top-ranked poem is:
when sometime the life loved to be throne revoking of shield in blood
Hey, give it some time. We're still in the Precambrian here. ;-)
I'm going to follow this project with interest.
Posted by timo at July 15, 2003 11:16 PM | TrackBack