The Change Mariner

Artificial Life: The New 'Creation'

Sun Sentinel (Florida):

More than 3.5 billion years after nature transformed non-living matter into living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants, scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life.

If they succeed, humanity will enter a new age of "living technology," where harnessing the power of life to spontaneously adapt to complex situations could solve problems that now defy modern engineering.

Scientists eagerly talk of a new world of ultra-small living machines, where marvelously made-to-order cells heal the body, clean up pollutants, transform electronics and communication, and much more.

The researchers say it may be possible to make sweaters that mend themselves. Or computers that fix their own glitches.

Though some experts see this new technology as providing unlimited benefits, others worry about the moral appropriateness of human-made life and the introduction of new species with the potential to evolve into creatures that could run amok.

"It's certainly true that we are tinkering with something very powerful here," said artificial-life researcher Steen Rasmussen of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

"But there's no difference between what we do here and what humans have always done when we invented fire, transistors and ways to split the atom," he said. "The more powerful technology you unleash, the more careful you have to be."

Posted by Bob King at March 29, 2004 05:10 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Area - Tech - Nanotechnology | Quadrant - Technological

Artificial Life : A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology
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Virtual Organisms: The Startling World of Artificial Life
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Artificial Life: An Overview (Complex Adaptive Systems)
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