Click on the book covers to find them on Amazon.com. Please nicely.
Creation: Life and how to make it
Growing up with Lucy: how to build an android in twenty easy steps
Read the introduction
Some nice things people said:
“This is a giant leap forward into a new and unknown world. The same processes which gave rise to life in the real world have been modelled in software and the results are awe-inspiring. I first saw this program in the same week that evidence was discovered of life on Mars. This is more exciting.”
- Douglas Adams
“Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation: Life and how to Make it, 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. Not since David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality have I encountered such a compelling invitation to think everything out afresh, from the bottom up.”
- Richard Dawkins
December 29, 2008 at 12:27 pm |
Greetings Steve!
I’ve dropped a line occasionally over the years to wish you and your family (both organic and silicon-based) seasons greetings and this year is no exception: Have a very Happy and Healthy 2009!
Best wishes,
Rich.
P.S Sorry, I lost your email addy!!
December 29, 2008 at 12:55 pm |
Oops — sorry my mistook!
December 29, 2008 at 1:44 pm |
Thanks Rich. Happy New Year to you and any robots too!
January 25, 2009 at 7:06 pm |
Hi Steve,
I heard about you at a recent symposium named ‘Supertoy’ at the Arnolfini Centre in Bristol. I was also chatting to Ann who I met there as I’m running a Cafe Scientifique soon.
Your new robot venture sounds interesting-I’ll keep my eye on it.
Well done in getting to the US, how did you manage it as I’d love to move out there too?
January 25, 2009 at 7:44 pm |
Hi Sam,
Yes, Ann said Supertoys was good. Tom Trevor and Geoff Cox had been trying to get that show on the road for some years – I was supposed to be involved too, but events got in the way. I’m really glad they finally got it together.
> Well done in getting to the US, how did you manage it as I’d love to move out there too
I hope your new Cafe Sci is a big success.
January 28, 2009 at 10:38 am |
Fantastic!
Thanks for your honest reply. I’m a little away from the mid-life crisis, and have just received a little boy-so I was impressed to read you took time off to raise yours.
I’ll follow your ‘Grandriod’ venture and tell my students. If there’s anything I can help with on the robotics front, or if you find any opportunities for me over the pond, do let me know.
Regards,
Sam
March 17, 2009 at 9:48 pm |
Hey Steve,
I’m nearly 3/4 way through your book Creation.
It’s definitely a fantastic read and helped me develop new ways of looking at artificial life.
I’ve had a look through the bibliography and cannot find what I’m looking for, that is, a book on pure cybernetics. I’ve done book searches on-line and it always just comes up with information theory and complexity theory and so on. I can’t find a book that is just on the kind of stuff you talk about in Chapter 8 of your book.
Any suggestions?
Shaun
March 18, 2009 at 8:24 am |
Hey Shaun,
Thanks – glad you’re enjoying it!
>cannot find what I’m looking for, that is, a book on pure cybernetics.
Um, I’m not sure what to suggest. I just sort of absorbed cybernetics through my skin as a child, rather than from books. It was years before I even realized that there was a word for the way I thought. So I can’t offer much in the way of reading matter. What’s more, cybernetics in its original sense all but died, to be replaced by information theory and then complexity and complex adaptive systems, so there aren’t going to be many contemporary books. In fact I’m thinking of writing one, since there still seems to be a lot to say about feedback. Your best bet is perhaps to track down some of the early texts, like “Cybernetics”, by Norbert Weiner.
Another good place to look might be the Principia Cybernetica website (damn them – I’d have loved to write a book by that name!) at http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/
May 10, 2009 at 1:42 pm |
Mr. Grand
LOVED reading the ‘Creation’ book. It made me regret all those years of making fun of computer nerds.
A few questions:
1) Im not a computer programer, but have ideas inspired by your book. Are their ‘turnkey’ programs i could start with in order to learn/explore your ideas?
2) By training im a fiction writer/theologian/philosopher. Your work has inspired me to start making notes for a story. Thank you!
Jason
May 10, 2009 at 6:33 pm |
Hi Jason,
Thank you!
Well, there are assorted artificial life simulators around, but even they can be a bit technical. It depends a lot on which aspects you’re interested in. On the whole, if you want to explore your own ideas I’m afraid you’ll have to admit defeat and become a computer nerd too!
Hope the story works out. Strange that an atheist like me can inspire something in a theologian. Best of luck.
- Steve
June 7, 2009 at 10:39 pm |
Hey Steve,
Couldn’t find a more appropriate place to post this so sorry if it is out of place…
I was digging through old computers discs tonight and found my copy of Creatures, unfortunately it wouldn’t install on my Vista machine:(. So I tracked down the the developer, which, of course, brought me here. On arriving, I read your bio which stated that you are looking to work on a successor to Creatures. That’s exciting.
I recently graduated with my BFA studying New Media Arts here in Toronto, Canada. I’ve always been interested in artificial life and the possibility of ‘creating consciousness’. I’ve been working, albeit very casually, within the Processing environment (processing.org) to build an artificial musician who listens, reacts and responds musically to the timbre, ‘mood’, etc. of my live playing… still very much in progress.
Anyhow, the reason for my post is simply to extend my kudos to you, I’ve just ordered both your books and can’t wait to dig into them. It is inspiring to a recent graduate with a seemingly similar disposition (and that post-recent-graduation search for direction) to read your biography and look at your work (I’m not being a kiss ass, it truly is).
If you are ever looking for eager young minds who haven’t been jaded enough to refuse volunteering their time towards interesting projects, drop me a line:)
June 7, 2009 at 10:57 pm |
Thanks Chris!
> unfortunately it wouldn’t install on my Vista machine
Yeah, sorry about that. When I started writing it, it was for MS-DOS, then I rewrote it for Windows 3.1, then Windows 95 came out before I’d finished it and so I had to change it again. Obviously I didn’t look far enough ahead, though – it never occurred to me someone might want to install it 12 years later!
Thanks for the kind words. I hope you enjoy the books. Good luck with finding a direction (and I hope whatever it turns out to be pays!) Good luck with the virtual accompanist too.
Watch this space.
July 3, 2009 at 7:01 am |
Hi Steve,
I just finished your excellent book ‘Creation,’ and reading the last chapter I realised there is an author/researcher whose work you might be interested in. He’s called Nicholas Humphrey and he developed the social intelligence theory of consciousness. All his books are wonderful, but, if interested, you might like to begin with ‘A History Of The Mind.’ ‘Seeing Red,’ ‘The Inner Eye’ and ‘Soul Searching’ are also fantastic.
Let me know if you find inspiration for that thing you wrote you were so close to finding…
STEVE…
July 3, 2009 at 2:13 pm |
Hi Steve,
Thanks for that. I know a little of Nick Humphrey’s work but I don’t read nearly enough, so I’ll check those out.
Trust me, the minute I catch hold of that glimpse, I’ll tell the entire world!
July 27, 2009 at 1:33 pm |
I bought Creation used from Amazon (sorry Steve!). I found something hilarious on the inside cover. It was originally purchased by the library of Avila University, a Christian “higher learning” institution in Kansas City, Missouri. Apparently your title fooled them, but not for long. There’s a red ink stamp: “WITHDRAWN” stamped over their bar code.
I’ve scanned it. If you’re interested, send me an email and I’ll reply back with the image attached.
Good day all,
–Myles
PS Old news for everyone here I’m sure, but if you enjoyed Creation, you must read Greg Egan’s, Diaspora.
July 27, 2009 at 1:47 pm |
Superb!
August 8, 2009 at 1:49 am |
I just looked into Avila U. It’s a Catholic organization, which I suppose is not as bad as if it was a true ID/fundamentalist place. After all, they’ve admitted that Galileo was right after all, so that’s a start. And they seem to be nearing official acceptance of evolution. Not that I’m a big fan of the Catholics; I found this statement on the Avila web site (in the president’s blog):
“All of created reality has been created by God so as to express the grace of God. ”
As opposed to… non-created reality? It seems weak for a piece generated by a Catholic university president. If he removed that first “created” it would be a bolder statement, although still whacked.
October 5, 2009 at 9:02 pm |
Steve, these thoughts may be a bit of a ramble…I believe that language is the key to us being “thinking” beings. In particular, I think the voice we all have in the back of our heads as the center of our ability to think, and that voice is using a language (english for me). E.g. when we come across a new situation, that voice in the back or our heads helps us reason through it. Other animals and mamimals don’t have this voice or, more to the point a lnguage, and so have limited means to reason. A dog can’t rationalize a situation because of it’s lack of a significantly complex language. I have poorly explained this and I am sure it sounds wacky but language is the loop by which we reason and learn, it helps us give feedback to others so they can learn as well. I have not played Creatures yet, but I imagine one constraint to the creatures learning is not being able to see you and your body language and verbal language as you react to what they say and/or do.
October 5, 2009 at 9:48 pm |
Hi Michael, It’s certainly ONE key. There are definitely things that you can only think about in language. But there are other ways to think too and I think it depends on how your particular mind works. My first wife would totally agree with you – everything is words in her head. But I do all my best thinking in visual models of things in motion – which is why I’m an engineer, I guess – and I only use language when I need to remember something or explain it to someone. So I agree that language is really important, but there are other things too and people vary a lot in the way they think best. That ability to have an inner voice is very similar to the ability to have an inner visual world or an inner tune or whatever – they’re all examples of mentation, and certainly many animals show little ability to disengage themselves from the world and freewheel like this. My little creatures have absolutely no ability to do this, which is what set me off on my present line of research. Thanks for the observation!
November 6, 2009 at 1:02 am |
Hi
I am fascinated by what you are doing. My own research interests include the ‘embodied mind’ and I think your own work falls neatly along those lines – as well as pushing some lines.
So here is my question…how can i, a lay person, do a ‘Lucy-esq’ project?
Jason
November 6, 2009 at 1:24 pm |
Hi Jason. Thanks.
> how can i, a lay person, do a ‘Lucy-esq’ project?
That’s a big question! I guess I’m a lay person too. Basically you have to develop a bunch of skills and knowledge – electronics, electromechanics, programming, biology, neuroscience, psychology, dynamics, computer science, optics, complexity theory… After that it’s easy!
You can go out and buy a robot, if that’s what you want to do, but it’s hard to find one that doesn’t have inbuilt assumptions that might affect your ideas, which is why I design my own. I don’t really think there’s a substitute for doing everything yourself. I don’t know anything about you, so it’s hard to make concrete suggestions.
November 6, 2009 at 1:51 pm |
Hi Steve
Thanks for your feedback. I’m an Independent Scholar myself, or starting down that road (i’m just now getting published, book comes out in the new year etc). My interest – or my emerging interest – is the idea of the ‘embodied mind’ (have you read Steve Lakoff’s ‘Philosophy In the Flesh’ – i think you might dig it!). There are websites a-ton with the ‘bits’ to build the body – since i would not have the skills to build an orangutan it would interesting to see how different bodies lead to different types of development and ‘being’ in the world. It’s the mind that I am wondering about – how did you do it? How does one start etc? Do you have an ‘open source brain’ that you have put out into the world or are you planing on selling it for other developers to use?
Jason
November 6, 2009 at 4:08 pm |
No, I don’t have an open-source brain, sadly (you could interpret that phrase two ways and neither would be true!). Lucy was just a research project and I junked the results after they’d taught me a few things. Plus the hardware was very specific – I designed the computers myself, etc. – so it would be very difficult for someone else to re-use the code anyway.
What I was interested in was the types of neural computations that might make imagination possible, so it was quite a specific piece of research in one way and quite general in another. At the moment my robotics life is stalled, but what I was ultimately aiming for was a mind, certainly. Not a brain but a mind that could think thoughts “inside its head”, which is a very rare beast in the AI world. But as yet I still don’t really know how to do it, and nobody else does either.
If you’re interested in how embodiment defines the mind then I imagine the TYPE of mind is a very important factor. A number of researchers have studied embodiment, and you may know some of them, but the “minds” were very trivial stimulus-response systems. It sounds like you’re hoping for rather more than that, but I have to say that AI is pretty much a failure at this point. It’s great at automating things that humans use intelligence to do, but this doesn’t usually mean the automatic system itself is intelligent (I need intelligence to do arithmetic, but a pocket calculator doesn’t). So far, nobody anywhere has got remotely close to developing a complete artificial brain that can do the range of things an animal’s brain can do. It’s still very much a research problem, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
So what do you want your robot to be able to DO? That’s a good starting point for discussion. Oh, and also give me an idea of your skill-set.
November 6, 2009 at 6:13 pm |
My skill set? Um…curious. That is my skill set.
Basically I am fascinated by the idea that we cannot have a brain or mind with out a body. I’m very interested in what you did with Lucy – or what you theorized – and was just wondering if their were ‘hobbiest’ way to do something similar.
The idea of a learning ‘being’ which can grow and adapt and become (here here my Process philosophy roots are showing) and that that becoming is shaped by its body – by the way in which it knows its world – well, that is just cool.
I also publish fiction (yep…my ‘indie scholar’ and my desired day job are both no goes on the money front) and now have an ‘edge’ of story idea inspired by your concept and a ‘robotic biosphere’ on, oh lets say, Mars!
Basically I would love to be able to – in a cheap, hobby sort of way – recreate the expierement, or at least a ’shadow’ of it, in order to play with the ideas myself.
So…um…skill set…I wish!
Jason
Ps
The Lakoff book i mentioned is by George Lakoff and not Steve Lakoff. It looks at cognitive science as challenging our assumptions of philosophy. My current publishing all center around pop culture but am hoping to branch out after my book comes out in the new year.