[alife] book announcement - "Imitation of Life", Forbes.

[Titus Brown]

----- Forwarded message from David Weininger <dgw at MIT.EDU> -----

I thought readers of the Artificial Life Announcements List might be 
interested in this book.  For more information please visit 
http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262062410

Imitation of Life
How Biology Is Inspiring Computing
Nancy Forbes

As computers and the tasks they perform become increasingly complex, 
researchers are looking to nature--as model and as metaphor--for 
inspiration. The organization and behavior of biological organisms present 
scientists with an invitation to reinvent computing for the complex tasks of 
the future. In Imitation of Life Nancy Forbes surveys the emerging field of 
biologically inspired computing, looking at some of the most impressive and 
influential examples of this fertile synergy.

Forbes points out that the influence of biology on computing goes back to 
the early days of computer science--John von Neumann, the architect of the 
first digital computer, used the human brain as the model for his design. 
Inspired by von Neumann and other early visionaries, as well as by her work 
on the "Ultrascale Computing" project at the Defense Advanced Research 
Projects Agency (DARPA), Forbes describes the exciting potential of these 
revolutionary new technologies. She identifies three strains of biologically 
inspired computing: the use of biology as a metaphor or inspiration for the 
development of algorithms; the construction of information processing 
systems that use biological materials or are modeled on biological 
processes, or both; and the effort to understand how biological organisms 
"compute," or process information.

Forbes then shows us how current researchers are using these approaches. In 
successive chapters, she looks at artificial neural networks; evolutionary 
and genetic algorithms, which search for the "fittest" among a generation of 
solutions; cellular automata; artificial life--not just a simulation, but 
"alive" in the internal ecosystem of the computer; DNA computation, which 
uses the encoding capability of DNA to devise algorithms; self-assembly and 
its potential use in nanotechnology; amorphous computing, modeled on the 
kind of cooperation seen in a colony of cells or a swarm of bees; computer 
immune systems; bio-hardware and how bioelectronics compares to silicon; and 
the "computational" properties of cells.

Nancy Forbes works as a science and technology analyst for the federal 
government. She has advanced degrees both in physics and the humanities, and 
has served as a contributing editor for The Industrial Physicist and 
Computing in Science and Engineering.

6 x 9, 176 pp., 48 illus., cloth, ISBN 0-262-06241-0

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