Sorting through a box of stuff from PhD days I came across my notes from the Digital Biota 2 conference in Cambridge, 1998! Including talks from Richard Dawkins/Steve Grand/Larry Yaeger/Tom Ray/Douglas Adams/Maggie Boden/Rudy Rucker/Chris Langton. Wow!!! digitalspace.com/cyberbiology.o…

A very different conversation than the usual: I joined Tom Barbalet for his Last Monkey Standing podcast, along with leading open-ended evolution researcher Tim Taylor, to discuss the connections and contrasts between AI & Alife in the field of open-endedness: youtube.com/watch?v=MIi5JN…

It was fantastic to have the opportunity of a long discussion yesterday with the one and only Kenneth Stanley about open endedness and open-ended evolution. Many thanks to Tom Barbalet for hosting on his Last Monkey Standing channel! youtu.be/MIi5JN3Zzb8?si…

⭐️We are seeking proposals to host the Conference on Artificial Life in 2026 and 2027. ⭐️ 🟢Conferences should be a hybrid format. 🟢No geographical constraints. 🟢Support from ISAL RE: conference infrastructure + submission reviews. Full details here: alife.org/alife-2026-and…

.Giliam de Carpentier used a genetic algorithm to evolve the linkage design for his walking wooden coffee table, the Carpentopod. The result is beautiful youtu.be/xKDY4yWxfJM?si…

I'm pleased to announce a new second edition of the author-formatted version of our book Rise of the Self-Replicators, which includes my 2024 afterword (originally published in the Artificial Life journal) as an extra chapter. More details & free download: tim-taylor.com/news/posts/202…

I'm enjoying reading @MitchWaldrop's venerable account of the origin and early years of Santa Fe Institute, published in 1992. Wonderful to learn that John Holland developed his first classifier system in machine code (not even assembly language) on his Commodore computer at home 👏

I'm happy to announce that the free online version of "Rise of the Self-Replicators" has now been updated to the 2nd edition of the author-formatted version of the book, which includes the 2024 afterword as an additional chapter. Find the online version at tim-taylor.com/selfrepbook/we…

The npj Complexity journal has an open call for a new collection topic "Unnatural Histories: Investigating the Improbable with Experimental Evolution and Artificial Life". Accepting submissions from now up to 12 Sept 2025 nature.com/collections/ha…

#ALIFE2025 will take place in Kyoto, Japan (6-10 October).

The 40th anniversary of the ALIFE Conference 2025 conference series is approaching. Please contribute your memories and archival materials to help me prepare a book for this anniversary in the field of #ArtificialLife. #ALIFE40 ISAL Artificial Life #alife droplets.vscht.cz/links/alife40

I'm looking forward to reading this novel, written by microbiologist Richard Goodman under the pen name Bonham Richards. Goodman was a friend of ALife pioneer Nils Aall Barricelli, and George Dyson tells me that the character Angelo Kraakmo in the book is based upon Barricelli!

In 1951, in between working on his application to visit John von Neumann's Electronic Computer Project group at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Nils Aall Barricelli also found time to file a patent for "An Improved Chest of Drawers"! 😁 worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDet…

On BBC Radio 4 Today yesterday James Marriott used a brilliant junk food metaphor to describe search results produced by AI chatbots, calling them "ultra-processed information, superficially nutritious but actually pretty empty." Listen at bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0… (starts at 2:47:42).