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Rating: 
Summary: This is a great book.
Review: A report from the frontier where computers meet biology. This is a great book. How else would it make it onto Kwato's select reading list? About the genetic algorithm. Remember all the fuss about expert systems and artificial intelligence? Well, this is the way ol' Mother Nature figures out how to get things done. Chilling. Terrifying, Interesting. Colonies of light in magnetic and silicate media live, die, reproduce and struggle for survival. This is the best book of its type I have ever read. It is really, really interesting and Steve Levy puts it all together. Sala'am, Steve Levy (I am making oriental-style bows in my cube right now) Plus is is scary. Not fun scary like Frankenstein, but deep-down scary. The future belongs to RAM creatures.
Rating:
Summary: My Review of this Book
Review: I have read this book. It is about artifical intelligence. If you have a computer you will know exactly what I mean. When you hook up a computer, it acts alive, and you gotta interact with it like it is artifically intelligent. Like when I hook up the voice-recognition thing where you speake into the mikerofone, it acts like it hears you too, and does what it is told to do. Sometimes that is to write a letter, or to tell it to go onto the net. I told my computer to go onto the net once thru the mike, and it did it, as it was spoken and said what to do. So if you read and buy this book you will learn to do this, and hook it up yourself. The book has plans and charts to do all this stuff. When you read it, pass it onto a friend, and they may help you once they read it themselves. I gave this book 5-stars, because it was a very good one, and I will now know how my computer is so smart. I told it what to do, and it help me with this revue to. So buy it but just one time, because a friend and other people will be able to read this for free, once you give it to them. Engines are my hobbie, and so are electronic power supplys, so I plan to use this book for that to. I will design new ones that are faster than sound, and my computer will be smart and help me with that. So buy this book, once, and you will like it along with all the friendly people that you knowe.That's my revuiew, but I will do anew one when a new adition of the book comes out to the press. I do recomend that you buy this one time for the people who wanto know about how artifical intelligent computers get smarter and help you with life-things you need to do, but not all by yourselfe, but with a computer.
Rating:
Summary: Great Beginners book
Review: I just loved this book. It gives the novice a very good sampling of the future of Artificial Intellegence and Artificial Life. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the discovery of machine virus'. Somewhat dated, but an extremely good read.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating
Review: I read this more than three years ago, before I started my undergraduate studies. I knew I was going to study computer science, but after reading this book I knew I would forever be drawn to the multidisciplinary fields of biology and computer science. From the question of the origin of life to intelligence, the book convinced me that a new approach is needed to solve these old mysteries. It's not a masterpiece of literature, but it was interesting enough to forever change my research career.
Rating:
Summary: A thorough introduction of the field of Artificial Life.
Review: Levy's book describes the many facets of artificial life. The computer revolution, ushered in by John von Neumann, was motivated by the desire to reproduce the complex functions of the human brain in a machine. John von Neumann argued that life was a series of mathematical processes that can be mimicked by machines. Arguably, his idea led to the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick. Although von Neumann was dissatisfied with the very limited extant in which computers can think like humans, his ideas inspired the next generation of computer scientists to pursue his goal. This goal eventually became the field of artificial intelligence. Given the limited success of AI, other scientists decided to simulate on the computer life instead of intelligence. Levy introduces these scientists and their work. A common theme connects their efforts: the question whether artificial organisms are alive. This controversy pitted computer scientists against biologists, and because the goal of the former was so unorthodox, for many years a-life scientists were outcasts even in their own profession. The question remains unresolved because a-life creatures eventually exhibit many characteristics that biologists identify as belonging solely to organisms. A-life organisms metabolize, adapt to their environment, reproduce, etc. They resemble life so much that biologists eventually recognized and accepted, although grudgingly, the ability of computer simulations to predict animal behavior and aid in the study of evolution. Don't think that Levy completely supports a-life; it is not without its dangers. For example, computer viruses, which resemble in behavior to viruses, have wrecked havoc on corporations and individuals and will continue to pose a threat to the industrialized world. There is also the possibility and probability that sometime in the distant future, artificial life will displace and replace organic life. In conclusion, Levy's book traces the development of a-life, both its successes and failures. This book requires some knowledge of computer science and biology, but is pleasurable for people curious about this increasingly popular field.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction To Artificial Life
Review: This book is a quick read and a great introduction to artificial life. It combines something of the science, the personalities and the history of this field. For general readers with some technical sophistication it affords an opportunity to broaden one's horizons without too much of a mathematical stretch; for computer scientists who are thinking of their own research it can give a general idea of some of the accomplishments in the field and a place to start delving into the original research papers. Read it and enjoy the future!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Introduction to Many Scientists
Review: This book serves as a good introduction to the work many individuals are doing not only in Artificial Life but also in fields related to Artificial Life. If you want an indepth examination then you will probably have to find items written by the individual scientists, but this is enough to get your feet wet and thus allow you to focus your search. If you are interested in these topics I would suggest you also look at Complexity Science and the similar books there like "Complexity" by Waldrop and "Out of Control" by Kelly, though many times the anecdotes in these three stories are very similiar Waldrop and Kelly look more at Santa Fe Institute. Finally though I haven't read the reprint version of this book, the original book seems very gloomy in terms of its attitude on Artificial Life. Levy seems to think that Artificial Life will be created but the entire last chapter seems to indicate he thinks it will be bad. Anyway it's a good book overall especially if you know nothing about the subject. If you know something then it provides a good examination to a lot of different techniques and you can easily learn something you didn't know before.
Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction to Many Scientists
Review: This book serves as a good introduction to the work many individuals are doing not only in Artificial Life but also in fields related to Artificial Life. If you want an indepth examination then you will probably have to find items written by the individual scientists, but this is enough to get your feet wet and thus allow you to focus your search. If you are interested in these topics I would suggest you also look at Complexity Science and the similar books there like "Complexity" by Waldrop and "Out of Control" by Kelly, though many times the anecdotes in these three stories are very similiar Waldrop and Kelly look more at Santa Fe Institute. Finally though I haven't read the reprint version of this book, the original book seems very gloomy in terms of its attitude on Artificial Life. Levy seems to think that Artificial Life will be created but the entire last chapter seems to indicate he thinks it will be bad. Anyway it's a good book overall especially if you know nothing about the subject. If you know something then it provides a good examination to a lot of different techniques and you can easily learn something you didn't know before.
Rating:
Summary: Foundations of Alife
Review: This is an extremely well written survey of the entire field of Alife. It's the best general introduction to Alife in print and I expect it shall be in print for quite some time.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent intro to a new science
Review: While the concept of artificial life has been around at least since humans developed self-awareness, the commensurate decline of religion and rise of the scientific method was necessary for it to become a point of real debate. However, it was not until September 1987 when the event occurred that established a-life as an academic discipline, namely a conference devoted to its study. This work uses that event as a starting point, and does a superb job of presenting nearly all perspectives, including historical.
Like its counterpart, artificial intelligence, the discipline of a-life suffers from a lack of definition. There is no agreement on what life or intelligence are. Additional disagreement arises over the following distinctive descriptions of life.
(a) Objects such as rocks can be assigned a life (intelligence) value of zero and as we move upward to humans and beyond, the measure of life (intelligence) characteristics is described by a smooth, continuous function where the first derivative never becomes very large, but is always positive. There is no clearly discernible boundary between life and non-life.
(b) Starting from the same initial position as (a), the derivative stays close to zero for some time, and then suddenly becomes unbounded, as the matter now possesses the fundamental essence of life (intelligence). That point of the vertical derivative is the boundary point between animate and inanimate objects.
Much of this book deals with cellular automata and the algorithms used to create them. Like so many new, perhaps revolutionary disciplines, the major players tend to be free spirits. Many of the people described here bounced around before finding their ecological niche in a-life. With the exception of the originators, John von Neumann and John Horton Conway, those who established the study of cellular automata as an academic discipline were academic outsiders who literally created it from nothing. The explanation of that is very well done. While most of the work has been done by computer, no previous knowledge is necessary to understand the text.
One item could have been better handled, but that is largely due to the problems with definitions. Like the workers in chaos, a-lifers tend to see what they want to see. For example, simple rules are used to create an image that either looks or acts like something known to be alive and this is used to argue that life is being created or that the rules that create life are simple. Which is an extremely weak argument. What is being created are items that human eyes interpret as looking like life, and as all psychologists know, the human brain processes images with a bias towards previous experience. The devil's advocate against is a shadow here. However, it is difficult to argue in the negative when you are aiming at a nebulous target.
Whatever your interest in a-life, you will find something of value in this book. Biologists and philosophers who teach general education courses will also find a good deal of discussion material. The hypothetical qualification has been removed form the debate, as there are now objects to argue about.
Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission
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