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

Author - Stefan Helmreich ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from University of California Press was reviewed on 3-Nov-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated With a New Preface by University of California Press. I must admit that it took me repeated readings to appreciate the depth of the research that has gone into this insightful book. Dr. Stefan Helmreich´s critique of the tribe of Artificial Life scientists is right on, courageous and extremely thought provoking.

(...)¤

2) Paperback Book Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated With a New Preface by University of California Press. The cover blurb says "Anthropologist Stefan Helmreich´s look at the social and simulated worlds of Artificial Life" and it turns out to be horribly true. I hoped to learn how the programmers viewed their simulated worlds, and how that relates to their culture. Instead I found how Stefan looks at the programmers, and what he thinks of science. The background description of individuals and institutions isn´t bad. The rest is.

Camille Paglia is not usually classified as an anthropologist, but this book reminded me of her - if she couldn´t write well and ignored the culture she wrote about. This book has little bearing on its purported subject, and the author´s personal views of science aren´t interesting (largely because he´s speaking on a subject he clearly doesn´t understand). If you want Camille Paglia, read Camille Paglia. If you want an actual anthroplogical study of science or A-life, don´t waste your time here.¤

3) Paperback Book Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated With a New Preface by University of California Press. Stefan Helmreich presents an entertaining glimpse into the culture, the lives, and the musings of many of the leading voices in the field of artificial life. One of the real strengths of this book is his ability to offer a perspective from ´inside´ the discipline--a view not only of the history and present status and future direction of the field of artificial life, but of the scientists and researchers responsible. That, plus his personal fascination with the subject matter and his obvious writing skills, strike you within the first few pages. This was at times a literate and enjoyable read.

Unfortunately, it was also frustrating and, ultimately, disappointing. Frustrating because it is patently obvious that the author approached his subject matter with his ethnographic conclusions firmly in place prior to ever examining the evidence. There is no other way one can explain the lengths he goes to convince the reader that white, heterosexual, male-dominated mythologies lurk under every bush he came across in Santa Fe. As such, truly interesting questions he raises--such as the religious aspect of silicon-based creation--are either left unread by the reader long since turned off by his biased approach, or else unfairly dismissed as equally prejudiced.

And disappointing, because in the long run most of his efforts are either irrelevant, or trivial. Computational studies in evolution are at bottom a matter of binary code. Zero´s and one´s. They are neither black nor white, Baptist or Buddhist, straight or gay, male or female. Now, clearly the researcher at their computer may indeed be any of the above--but that does not change the code itself. So in this sense Helmreich´s observations are irrelevant. On the other hand, no one would argue the fact that personal bias may well contaminate interpretations of computational results. Personal bias may well contaminate almost everything we say and do, to one degree or another. But that is a rather trivial observation to make--one that has everything to do with human beings, and next to nothing to do with the science of computational evolution, which is what I had assumed from the title "Silicon Second Nature" that this book was about.¤

4) Paperback Book Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated With a New Preface by University of California Press. The best I can say about this book is that it is the most outstanding example of academic pretentiousness I´ve ever encountered. The author´s acknowledgments alone cover six pages and include over 185 names.
My own background includes a college education (philosophy and mathematics) and ten years as a college instructor in computer science. I´m quite used to reading and comprehending technically sophisticated literature, often poorly written. I can even claim to have understood much of Microsoft´s documentation for their developer products. Nevertheless, I found Mr. Helmreich´s prose quite inpenetrable. If his goal was to explain the people and culture behind the new field of Artificial Life to a lay audience, he has failed miserably.
To be fair, I must admit that I put the book down after struggling through the first thirty pages of the main text. The book´s cover states that Mr. Helmreich is a professor at NYU. If the prose in his book is any indication of the lucidity of his lectures to his students, they have my deepest sympathy.¤

5) Paperback Book Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated With a New Preface by University of California Press. The book is easy-to-read and yet profound. It delineates some of the biases, givens, and constants that may exist and are unperceived. The book also serves as an excellent intro to ALife studies at one of the worlds major thinktanks and research centers.¤

6) Paperback Book Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated With a New Preface by University of California Press. Silicon Second Nature takes us on an expedition into an extraordinary world where nature is made of bits and bytes and life is born from sequences of zeroes and ones. Artificial Life is the brainchild of scientists who view self-replicating computer programs--such as computer viruses--as new forms of life. Anthropologist Stefan Helmreich´s look at the social and simulated worlds of Artificial Life--primarily at the Santa Fe Institute, a well-known center for studies in the sciences of complexity--introduces readers to the people and programs connected with this unusual hybrid of computer science and biology.
When biology becomes an information science, when DNA is downloaded into virtual reality, new ways of imagining "life" become possible. Through detailed dissections of the artifacts of Artifical Life, Helmreich explores how these novel visions of life are recombining with the most traditional tales told by Western culture. Because Artificial Life scientists tend to see themselves as masculine gods of their cyberspace creations, as digital Darwins exploring frontiers filled with primitive creatures, their programs reflect prevalent representations of gender, kinship, and race, and repeat origin stories most familiar from mythical and religious narratives.
But Artificial Life does not, Helmreich says, simply reproduce old stories in new software. Much like contemporary activities of cloning, cryonics, and transgenics, the practice of simulating and synthesizing life in silico challenges and multiplies the very definition of vitality. Are these models, as some would claim, actually another form of the real thing? Silicon Second Nature takes Artifical Life as a symptom and source of our mutating visions of life itself.¤

7) Paperback Book Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World, Updated With a New Preface by University of California Press. Few scientific disciplines are as ripe for ethnographic study as artificial life, known as a-life, a hybrid, high-tech field with practitioners who routinely suggest that the self-replicating computer programs they design not only mimic but actually are living creatures. As Stanford anthropologist Stefan Helmreich convincingly demonstrates, it takes more than just chutzpah to advance such a claim--it takes a powerful belief system. The belief system Helmreich fingers is the complex web of historical, mythical, and religious narratives that form the fabric of modern Western culture.

Of course, a good deal of solid science goes into a-life´s elaborate digital simulations of the biological world, and Helmreich takes care not to let his cultural analysis drown that science out. Indeed, his descriptions of the theories and techniques behind some researchers´ attempts at concocting artificial life--ranging from simple computer viruses to Tom Ray´s globally distributed Tierra system for breeding digital "organisms"--are occasionally more compelling than his own attempts to read disturbing racial and sexual mythologies into those experiments.

Ultimately, though, what fascinates Helmreich about a-life is neither the biology nor the mythology, but the way this unique discipline highlights the intersection of the two. A-life researchers may or may not have created new organisms, but what they have created, Helmreich argues, points the way to a new and more sophisticated understanding of the delicate relationship between science and culture. --Julian Dibbell¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 1-Dec-2008, 05202080059780520208001, 490-370-350-970-050-411-8

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