Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

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Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker As you go upmarket from PCs, you find more and more capabilities which provide homeostasis-like behavior. The 1998 vintage Sun mid-range server which runs my Web site has 4 CPUs and 5 Gb of RAM, and has been running continuously for...let's see: vitesse:/files/kelvin> uptime up 209 day(s), 23:31 All of the RAM has double error correction and the operating system emails me when a chip is getting too many correctable errors so I can replace it before it dies entirely (and even that doesn't crash the system). All the hard drives are mirrored onto two or three separate drives on two independent controllers, and any failure simply causes a hot spare to be pressed into service, and again an email sent to me to replace the failed unit. The internal temperature is monitored, and fan speed is adjusted to keep it within limits. If the ambient air is too hot, the CPU clocks slow down to keep the temperature within limit, and if that's not sufficient, the system will put CPUs into hibernation, falling all the way back to one if necessary. If the system does crash, it performs a hardware test at reboot time and can “boot around” any failed components as long as it has one working CPU, memory bank, and system drive. There are three power supplies, of which only two are needed to run. The next generation after my server has three separate power cords, which can be wired to separate circuits and UPS boxes. And all of these components can be changed without powering down the machine or halting the system. And this is just one step up from a PC, and slower than a 2 GHz machine of today. This machine is of trivial complexity compared to a prokaryotic bacterium, not to speak of a metazoan organism, but a glimmering of homeostasis is there. RNA Evolution As well as trying to understand the chemical reactions that take place in living things, biochemists have investigated ways of creating the chemicals used by life. It is now possible to design artificial strands of RNA which are capable of self-replicating themselves when placed into a solution of amino acids; and one can even set a kind of RNA evolution into motion. In one recent experiment, a solution was filled with a random assortment of selfreplicating RNA along with amino acids for the RNA to build with. Some of the molecules tended to stick to the sides of the beaker. The solution was then poured out, with the molecules that stuck to the sides of the vessel being retained. A fresh food-supply of amino acids was added and the cycle was repeated numerous times. The evolutionary result? RNA that adheres very firmly to the sides of the beaker. Scripting computer games. Virtual world and agents bouncing off each other. p. 64
Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker The history of virtual reality, a fake world where things can interact asynchronously.. Three-dimensional graphics, immersion, and user interaction. Walking around a city talking on a cell phone. The creatures in a computer game are an excellent simulation of parallel agents. The problem of creating a satisfying computer game is, in small, an image of the question of why it is we happen to live in such an interesting world. Thinking about game design gives us fresh insights into both metaphysics and to non-traditional approaches to story-telling. Some may remember the excitement over “virtual reality” in the 1990s. Here in the 2000s, we have virtual reality all but fully implemented in our games. Games bring together the full panoply of computer technology including: simulations of physics, computer graphics algorithms, artificial intelligence, computer aided design, user interfaces, and webbased connectivity. In addition, games draw in such traditionally artistic endeavors as the visual arts, sound design, and story-telling. The essence of a good gaming experience is forgetting about the outer world. Absorption. Being in the zone. The flow. But walking to the bakery can be as interesting as a computer game. Possible games of the future. Don’t Worry About Biotech. I consider how serious are the threats posed by biotechnology, and what might be done about the problems. The news is mostly good. Our experiences with the virtual ecologies of cyberspace are numerically illuminating. I also explore the logic behind the open source genomics movement, which argues that it’s safer to have many different people tweaking genes than to have this power in the hands of a few large corporations. Class Four Time Series What would a class 4 time series look like? It’s not so visual, as we’re hopping around on a line. But we could have class 4 behavior if it condenses, say on a Cantor set, which would a paradigmatic example of a strange attractor embedded in a line. I think James Crutchfield was interested in looking for Class 4 behavior in time series generated by the logistic map. Weinberg’s Put-Down There’s a good reason why Dell and Intel don’t market Turing machines. Universality isn’t everything. Frankenstein The most famous fictional character who tries to create life is Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. Most of us know about Frankenstein from the movie versions of the story. In the movie version, Dr. Frankenstein creates a living man by sewing together parts of dead bodies and galvanizing the result with electricity from a thunderstorm. The original version is different. In Mary Shelley's novel, Victor Frankenstein is a student with a deep interest in p. 65
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Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

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