Document:Q11420

Field Guide to Artificial Life on the Web looks at two major orders of
weblife. The first is artificial life generated from computation. The
second is the life seen live on webcam transmissions. Both orders depend
on the electronic environment for their existence. The idea of
artificial life is not new. It's prefigured in the myths of Pygmalion,
the golem and Dr. Frankenstein's monster. Now programmers have evolved
technologies that can realize this dream. Their artificial beings are
made from strings of code that follow dedicated protocols. Creatures
such as Boids and Floys appear on the screen as patterns that twitch and
glide, blink and swarm. The most independent members of the group are
computer viruses. These entities make their way through the web,
reproducing and mutating as they go along. On the flip side of the
binary coin are live webcam webcasts. These semi-random samples of
ordinary life appear on the screen transformed by the mediations of
electronic technology. Webcams remake reality into artificial life. In
the myth of the Garden of Eden two trees are hived off for special
consideration. When humans connected with the Tree of Knowledge, history
began. What will happen when we get involved with the Tree of Life.