Awards

• Nominated for Sally Hacker Prize 2002
• Nominated for Sidney Edelstein Prize 2002

Overview

Working mostly alone, almost single-handedly writing 250,000 lines of computer code, Steve Grand produced Creatures®, 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.

Full Product Details

9780674011137

Table of Contents

Reviews

If you've heard about A-life but aren't quite sure what it is or where it's going, Grand's book is an excellent place to enter one of the more exciting areas of twenty-first-century science. -- John L. Casti Nature Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life; his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. -- Richard Dawkins The Guardian [Creation is] the latest word on computer intelligence, from the designer of a popular computer game...On the whole, Grand succeeds in providing useful hints to computer-savvy readers without drowning laymen in details of programming. At the same time, he gives an entertaining glimpse of the game itself, with descriptions of 'Ron,' the first creature he programmed for the computer game. Smoothly written and thought-provoking--worth a look for anyone curious about computer intelligence. Kirkus Reviews 20010715 Blending aspects of philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence, biology and computer gaming, Grand attempts to define life, discuss the nature of the human soul and demonstrate how it is possible to create entities that demand to be called both living and intelligent. A tall order indeed, and to wonderful effect...[Grand] is at his best describing the problems encountered and the solutions used to animate his virtual universe. While at first glance Grand's definitions of life might be off-putting, he explains his terms clearly and carefully, guiding the reader comfortably through various levels of discussion...[E]njoyable and thought-provoking. Publishers Weekly 20010910 When Steve Grand developed his artificial-life computer game <italics>Creatures nine years ago, he never dreamed that 1 million people would play it and come to care deeply about the lives of their virtual pets. <italics>Creatures allowed players to design these pets, or norns, and observe how they interacted with their environment and with other norns. The norns have computer-simulated hormones and DNA. They eat and breed. They fall in love. According to Grand's book Creation... <italics>Creatures was probably the closest thing there has been to a new form of life on this planet in four billion years. That's a pretty startling claim, but as Grand explains in his strangely accessible and consistently surprising book, whether or not you believe it depends on your definition of what's alive. Grand--now two years into building a 4-month-old robot orangutan named Lucy--argues that our traditional notion of life is just now beginning to change. -- Suzy Hansen Salon.com 20020102 Grand's entertaining but highly educational, historical, and intensely philosophical book on artificial life takes readers inside the mind of the creator of one of the more popular games, <italics>Creature, and its follow-ons. This personal account of the developmental steps of the game and its lifelike artificial creature in a rich cyberworld not only highlights the magic of how the creatures are programmed, but also provides a glimpse into the philosophy, implications, perspectives, and dilemmas in making them. This book is written not only to detail the highly technical aspects of the inner world image of the game, but also to enrich, incite, and promote the general awareness of synthetically generated beings...Delightful to read, easy to understand, and interesting to gamers and nongamers alike. -- J. Y. Cheung Choice 20020301

'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)

If you've heard about A-life but aren't quite sure what it is or where it's going, Grand's book is an excellent place to enter one of the more exciting areas of twenty-first-century science. - John L. Casti, Nature Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life; his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. - Richard Dawkins, The Guardian

Author Information

Steve Grand is co-founder and former Director of Technology at Creature Labs, a firm based in the United Kingdom. He has written and lectured widely on the topic of artificial life and was nominated by the Sunday Times (of London) as one of “The Brains behind the 21st Century.” His latest research objective is to build the world’s first conscious machine.

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