Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #03512
To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Steven Bolt sbolt@xs4all.nl
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 09:36:51 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Evolution Comparison
On Fri, 21 May 1999 JVernonM@aol.com wrote:
---8<---
> One more time with the automobile comparison. First, they were
> made cheap and available to all to fill a specific need. Then, as
> the popularity and mechanics evolved, others jumped on the
> bandwagon and the auto became the life blood of manufacturing and
> service oriented industries.
Machine evolution is not only happening, it may be in the middle of
its `Cambrian Explosion' stage, where many new species briefly
appear and nobody can know in which direction things will settle.
The car is a great example. It rapidly evolved, has modified its
environment (roads, highways, parking lots, out of town
supermarkets, sleeper cities, drive-ins) and found no natural
enemies worth mentioning, so now the population is growing out of
control. The car takes far more than its share of natural
resources, and offers diminishing benefits in return. In my
country, the streets and even highways are stuffed with cars. Our
government would like to get rid of most of them, but there seems
to be no way to achieve that. Perhaps the end of cheap oil and gas
will destroy the car, but I'm afraid that this hardy machine
species will find a way to adapt...
Like a virus, the car uses external means to reproduce and evolve.
The same is true for all machines, but the term `evolution' very
much applies.
Which doesn't mean that machines like Commander Data or the Asimovian
robots will evolve. Even in biological evolution, the human brain
isn't all that important. Most forms of life are better off without
it. Even the great apes, with bodies very similar to ours, didn't
evolve a brain like ours. Which strongly indicates that they simply
do not need it.
Imho Moravec's "artificial human" or even a robotic ant colony as a
result of machine evolution is extremely unlikely. Machines are
evolving a kind of nervous system, but a brain as we or anything
alive understands it won't fit their bodies, which only mimick life
in certain laboratories and hobby rooms, well away from the real
world of machine evolution. We're not looking at artificial life,
but at the evolution of something dead.
Best,
Steve
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# sbolt@xs4all.nl # Steven Bolt # popular science monthly KIJK #
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