I’ve mentioned this sort of thing previously – my favorite being the post on artificial fish inside the Second Life virtual simulation (reLink). Now comes news via the 3pointD blog of something a bit different: an artificial world for only artificial people (no jokes please). According to 3pointD’s source, an article on Science A Go-Go (Link), it’s much more ambitious than most AI projects. From the article:

A fascinating experiment into personality and social interaction in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture is about to be switched on by five European research institutes. The NEW TIES project will be a virtual world populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and society.

Food for thought. But this is a buffet:

The computer scientists on the other hand want to develop and study machine collaboration, with an eye on future applications in robotics,” he added.

Imagine if one of these artificial creatures fabs itself. Will it be a classified as a “living” thing? If not, could it split into a kirkyan? Interesting stuff.

What will tomorrow’s parties bring?

It took me some research and a few emails to learn how Bathsheba Grossman makes her metal sculptures. She was wonderfully generous back then so it’s no surprise to see her now explaining the process on video to the boys at Make: (Link). Go watch it. Then go to her site (Link) and read more. Then, if you’re still interested, you might want to do a search here for more examples (like this one – reLink). There are some very cool things happening in the rapid prototype/rapid manufacturing arena.

via 3pointD

{Image source: Make: Blog}

Interesting article over on the New York Times via C|Net (Link) discussing the “dark side” of technology. It focuses on nuclear, biotech, and nanotech, but this quote early in the piece isn’t as limited:

Mix new technologies with the wide variations in how organizations and individuals behave, and you often have “a recipe for explosion,” said Edward Tenner, author of “Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences.”

As most of you have noticed, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about other, related things; specifically behavior, reputation and advertising in relation to virtual spaces and online actitivity. I may check out Mr. Tenner’s book and should probably do some serious research into these areas instead of skimming surfaces via blogs and MSM sites and relying too much on my own professional design experience (worthwhile, but limited in scope).

I’ve not posted many nice product designs lately, so I thought this might help restore some of the balance here. The image is a solar lampion (not sure what a “lampion” is, but it’s a lamp of some sort) designed by Damian O’Sullivan. You can read more over on MoCo Loco (Link) where I found it. I suspect it’s vaporware, but maybe it’s not.

{Image source: MoCo Loco}

Caught a post yesterday on PSFK (Link) referring to an article on the New York Times website authored by Kevin Kelly. It’s called “Scan This Book!” (Link – registration required) and I’ve not yet had time to read it, but the excerpts on PSFK sounded so much like the kinds of things I’ve posted here and elsewhere …

Woody Evans: “Libraries would become self-aware and ubiquitous.”

Me: “The future library could itself be a kirkyan of sorts. Perhaps we need a new definition for something that collects together kirkyan physical instantiations and tracks all their activity?”

… that I intend to make time soon. I suspect there’s plenty of overlap (as I mention in PSFK’s comments).

I wonder how far he explores his comment “the now-fragile model of valuable copies”? Most people still limit their thoughts to intangibles: text, software, music, movies. Are they ever in for a surprise.

{Update: When I wrote this post, I’d intended to point out a related post over on ISHUSH (Link), but in my haste neglected to do so. It’s well worth a read.}