Rating: 
Summary: The beauty of nature in technology...
Review: In this book, Gary William Flake develops in depth the simple idea that recurrent rules can produce rich and complicated behaviors. Distinguishing "agents" (e.g., molecules, cells, animals, and species) from their interactions (e.g., chemical reactions, immune system responses, sexual reproduction, and evolution), Flake argues that it is the computational properties of interactions that account for much of what we think of as "beautiful" and "interesting." From this basic thesis, Flake explores what he considers to be today's four most interesting computational topics: fractals, chaos, complex systems, and adaptation. Each of the book's parts can be read independently, enabling even the casual reader to understand and work with the basic equations and programs. Yet the parts are bound together by the theme of the computer as a laboratory and a metaphor for understanding the universe. The inspired reader will experiment further with the ideas presented to create fractal landscapes, chaotic systems, artificial life forms, genetic algorithms, and artificial neural networks. Gary William Flake is a research scientist in the Adaptive Information and Signal Professing Department of Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton, New Jersey.
Rating: 
Summary: An instant classic
Review: Over the years I have read many books on artificial life, complex systems, and computer science. Quite simply, this book is best that I have ever seen. It is easy and fun to read because Flake has a casual and pleasant writing style. Yet it still manages to be true to all of the topics covered. In fact, all of the equations that are required to understand the topics are given, but Flake gives you the intuition that you need to understand them by giving many figures, metaphors, and analogies. Plus, the source code and images are just spectacular. I consider this book to be as important as Hofstaders "Goedel, Escher, Bach." So if you buy just one science book this year, this should be it.
Rating:
Summary: Really well written, clear and easy to read
Review: The book covers and links fractals, neural networks, CA, GA to computability, randomness and chaos. It switches nicely between theoretical and more practical aspects of computer simulations. I think that it is comprehensive and very nicely written.
Rating:
Summary: Visit the website!
Review: The companion website for this book can be found at: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/FLAOH/cbnhtml/ The website contains source code, Java applets, excerpts, an online version of the glossary, and many other resources related to the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Disapointing
Review: This book just tries to cover far too much material and is rarely a good introduction to the many subjects mentioned in the title.
Rating:
Summary: Are you ready to geek out?
Review: This is the book I had been dreaming of when I was renderingMandlebrot sets on my Apple //c back in the days of 1986 when I wouldskim the pages of Scientific American for formulas of new complexsystems and fractals. It seems to me like a definitive collection ofthe classics of the genre... this is the stuff that a certain kind ofwet dream is made up of. (For people who love Maths) It comes inchapters that each can be seen as completely separate units requiringeach a very different digestive effort. It doesn't contain a lot ofbeautiful pictures like some of the other books around the sametopics, but that's more than outweighted its completeness...It iscovering the whole range of fractals, complex dynamics (strangeattractors), cellular automata and neural networks on around 300pages, so there is not a lot of real-world examples,coding advice,serious philosophy or actual science, but this book has everything itneeds to be a classic. A great gift for mathematically inclined 16year-olds or people who know what that felt like, and also a greatresource on the many ways to create complexity inside of the computerthat can be applied to many things...
| 
