Archive for January, 2008
Cellular Automata
In Wolfram’s book “A New Kind of Science
Wolfram was hardly the first to use cellular automata to mimick real life. Martin Gerhardt and Heike Schuster created ‘HodgePodge’ a cellular automata to mimic a chemical reaction. They explained it as using a discrete form of a differential equation. Since we have described most natural phenomena with differential equations that may explain why we have not done more with cellular automata. We just haven’t needed it. We may find use for it in things we can not yet easily describe with differential equations.
For example, cellular automata has found success in artificial intelligence in solving echohydraulics modeling problems. Cellular automata is also being used in pattern recognition, image processing, fluid mechanics and bioinformatics.
Cellular automata is simple rules repeated over and over. While one would expect simple patterns to emerge and repetitive patterns to emerge, non-repetitive and complex patterns also emerge in some cases. The two examples shown use only two colors and simple rules. Three colors leads to many more complex designs.
Nested: If either neighbor but not both neighbors in previous row are black-> color this cell black else color it white.
Irregular: If self and right neighbor in previous row are white then self is same color as left neighbor in previous row. If self and right neighbor are not both white then self is opposite color of left neighbor in previous row.
Source code:
Java automata examples
More information:
A New Kind of Science, Talk at US by Stephen Wolfram
CelLab, Cellular Automata Laboratory
A New Kind of Science ( book is available online and free)
Some of the recent controversy about Wolfram’s book
Fractal Geometry
Cellular Automata Links
An Introduction to Lindenman Systems ( related subject )
The Primordial Soup Kitchen
One dimensional cellular automata Java applet
A weakly universal cellular automaton in the hyperbolic 3D space with three states
CyberLover swindles the willing
Well this was just a matter of time. Many chat bots have been trolling the internet doing a very good job of passing themselves off as humans. The easiest way to do this is of course to find a willing victim. CyberLover does just that.
CyberLover is fast and loose establishing up to 10 relationships every half hour. CyberLover then extracts personal information from the unwitting but willing victim.
Some of the best computer hacks done have been through social engineering rather than with clever code. This brings the best of both worlds together.
Right now CyberLover has been targeting Russians almost exclusively, the rest of the world is expected to be targeted in time for Valentine’s Day.
Biomorphs and artificial intelligence
I hadn’t heard of Biomorphs until I started wandering through The Magic Machine: A Handbook of Computer Sorcery
[ z = z^3 + c]
[ z = sin(z) + z^2 + c ]
Biomorphs were discovered by Clifford Pickover at the IBM Research Center. Biomorphs are like Mandelbrot functions in that you iterate a simple function over the complex plane. The algorithm is in the 2 example Java files below. Several more besides these two are known to reside between -20 and 20. { z^z + z^6 + c; z^z + z^6 + c; sin(z) + e^z +c; z^5 + c; z^z + z^5 + c; . . . } You should be able to figure out how to create them by altering the two examples in the download file.
Some people breed biomorphs and let them evolve as an artificial life form.
Source Code
biomorphs.tar.gz ( 2 Java source files for the biomorphs above )
More information:
Fractal Geometry
Dr. Clifford Pickover home page
Mad Teddy’s Fractals #2 Biomorphs
Processing
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.
Processing is free to download and available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Please help to release the next version!
Processing is an open project initiated by Ben Fry and Casey Reas. It evolved from ideas explored in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab.
Just how real is that dinosaur you are carrying?
Sure, you know how adorable Pleo is when you’re being all cute and cuddly with him. But what’s going to happen when someone’s Ritalin-addicted nephew is left alone with the hapless dinosaur for even a few minutes? While waiting to conduct our full, hands-on review, we decided to answer that question with a series of unauthorized — and let’s be honest — somewhat cruel tests. Be forewarned, in the video you’ll see Pleo: beaten and abused [ watch the video Pleo is here! But how much punishment can a robot dinosaur take? ]
Anthropomorphizing of computers has been going on since real bugs were ruining computer code. As people spend more time with technology and technology gets more user friendly the line between flesh and blood creatures and silicon creatures will get thinner.
One of my favorite books The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul
One of the more interesting things we’ve learned about anthropomorphizing is that people are very forgiving of the flaws in robots and computers that do not closely mimic live beings in appearance or in action. In the 1990s robots and software began to more closely resemble actual living beings. Instead of finding the flaws cute, people were put off by them and creeped out. Who could forget Microsofts ‘Clippy’? By making the robots and bots look and behave more like humans, we raised the bar on what we expected from them. When they failed people found it troubling. Pleo seems to elicit strong responses by being cute, not realistic and having a range of responses.
More information:
Killing a Pleo robotic dinosaur
