cover image Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated with a New Preface

Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated with a New Preface

Stefan Helmreich. University of California Press, $40 (330pp) ISBN 978-0-520-20799-8

Though it grew out of a dissertation and often reads like one, Stanford anthropologist Helmreich's study is a startling, cutting-edge look at the emerging field of Artificial Life (an offshoot of Artificial Intelligence), many of whose practitioners believe that the self-replicating computer programs they create are not mere representations of life but actual life-forms set loose to mutate, reproduce, compete and behave unpredictably in an alternative cyberspace universe. Helmreich, who interviewed a mix of AL scientists--Los Alamos physicists, ecology-minded biologists, hackers, ex-hippies, roboticists, chemists--attributes this hubristic conceit to the influence of science fiction, Judeo-Christian creation imagery, the American frontier spirit, New Age mysticism and the pervasiveness of TV in melding artificial worlds with reality. Some AL scientists see themselves as the vanguard force of evolution, on a mission to colonize new realms with their offspring, using programs such as Tierra, which conjures ""digital organisms"" to mimic biological evolution. Other AL scientists, though atheists, seem to embrace the field as a sort of religion, buttressed by their private, Zen-like experiences. In a scathing pro-feminist critique, Helmreich argues that the AL field, dominated by white males, is permeated with masculine imagery; cyber-organisms and automata are often referred to or portrayed by AL practitioners as ""primitive,"" ""childlike,"" female, dark-skinned or highly competitive. This, charges Helmreich, betrays the discipline's Eurocentric, corporatist, even sexist and racist assumptions. His sophisticated inquiry challenges the underpinnings--philosophical, scientific, financial, political--of the Artificial Life enterprise. 29 b&w illustrations. (Nov.)