Viruses in Turing's Garden

International audienceCohen and his supervisor Adleman defined a virus as follows: "A virus is a program that is able to infect other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy to itself". This definition seems to be well accepted by the computer security community as a foundational definition. Thus, a virus is a self-replicating program, whose offspring may be a mutation of the original program. Viruses thrive in our computers, which are based on Turing's model of computation. We discuss the fundamental reasons for this

Autopoietic-extended architecture: can buildings think?

To incorporate bioremedial functions into the performance of buildings and to balance generative architecture's dominant focus on computational programming and digital fabrication, this thesis first hybridizes theories of autopoiesis into extended cognition in order to research biological domains that include synthetic biology and biocomputation. Under the rubric of living technology I survey multidisciplinary fields to gather perspective for student design of bioremedial and/or metabolic components in generative architecture where generative not only denotes the use of computation but also includes biochemical, biomechanical, and metabolic functions. I trace computation and digital simulations back to Alan Turing's early 1950s Morphogenetic drawings, reaction-diffusion algorithms, and pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) in order to establish generative architecture's point of origin. I ask provocatively: Can buildings think? as a question echoing Turing's own "Can machines think?" Thereafter, I anticipate not only future bioperformative materials but also theories capable of underpinning strains of metabolic intelligences made possible via AI, synthetic biology, and living technology. I do not imply that metabolic architectural intelligence will be like human cognition. I suggest, rather, that new research and pedagogies involving the intelligence of bacteria, plants, synthetic biology, and algorithms define approaches that generative architecture should take in order to source new forms of autonomous life that will be deployable as corrective environmental interfaces. I call the research protocol autopoietic-extended design, theorizing it as an operating system (OS), a research methodology, and an app schematic for design studios and distance learning that makes use of in-field, e-, and m-learning technologies. A quest of this complexity requires scaffolding for coordinating theory-driven teaching with practice-oriented learning. Accordingly, I fuse Maturana and Varela's biological autopoiesis and its definitions of minimal biological life with Andy Clark's hypothesis of extended cognition and its cognition-to-environment linkages. I articulate a generative design strategy and student research method explained via architectural history interpreted from Louis Sullivan's 1924 pedagogical drawing system, Le Corbusier's Modernist pronouncements, and Greg Lynn's Animate Form. Thus, autopoietic-extended design organizes thinking about the generation of ideas for design prior to computational production and fabrication, necessitating a fresh relationship between nature/science/technology and design cognition. To systematize such a program requires the avoidance of simple binaries (mind/body, mind/nature) as well as the stationing of tool making, technology, and architecture within the ream of nature. Hence, I argue, in relation to extended phenotypes, plant-neurobiology, and recent genetic research: Consequently, autopoietic-extended design advances design protocols grounded in morphology, anatomy, cognition, biology, and technology in order to appropriate metabolic and intelligent properties for sensory/response duty in buildings. At m-learning levels smartphones, social media, and design apps source data from nature for students to mediate on-site research by extending 3D pedagogical reach into new university design programs. I intend the creation of a dialectical investigation of animal/human architecture and computational history augmented by theory relevant to current algorithmic design and fablab production. The autopoietic-extended design dialectic sets out ways to articulate opposition/differences outside the Cartesian either/or philosophy in order to prototype metabolic architecture, while dialectically maintaining: Buildings can think

European Avant-Garde: Art, Borders and Culture in Relationship to Mainstream Cinema and New Media

This research analyses the impact of transformation and hybridization processes at the intersection of art, science and technology. These forms of transformation and hybridization are the result of contemporary interactions between classic and digital media. It discusses the concept of 'remediation' presented by Bolter and proposes the concept of 'digital ekphrasis,' which is based on Manovich' s analyses of the interactions between classic and digital media. This is a model which, borrowed from semiotic structures, encompasses the technical as well as aesthetic and philosophical transformations of contemporary media. The thesis rejects Baudrillard's and Virilio's proposed concepts of 'digital black hole' as the only possible form of evolution of contemporary digital media. It proposes a different concept for the evolutionary model of contemporary hybridization processes based on contemporary forms of hybridizations that are rooted in aesthetic, philosophical and technological developments. This concept is argued as emancipated from the 'religious' idea of a 'divine originated' perfect image that Baudrillard and Virilio consider to be deteriorated from contemporary hybridization experimentation. The thesis proposes, through historical examples in the fine arts, the importance of transmedia migrations and experimentations as the framework for a philosophical, aesthetic and technological evolutionary concept of humanity freed from the restrictions of religious imperatives

Understanding computer game culture: the cultural shaping of a new medium

In the past few decades, video games have developed from a marginal technological experiment into a mainstream medium. During this period they have gone through several transformations, from arcade machines offering a few minutes of solitary fun for a quarter to monthly subscription-based online MMOs in which thousands of players spend hundreds or even thousands of hours and lead a significant part of their social life as a fantasy character. But what is it that has driven video games? development? Is it technology? Indeed, with every new generation of hardware, game designers were given a broader set of tools for evoking exhilarating experiences. But is not culture at least as important? What would games look like if Tolkien never had written Lord of the Rings, or if Nintendo had not brought Japanese manga drawing styles to the new medium? This book looks at the theoretical challenges and foundations on which to base a cultural shaping approach towards the evolution of video games and proposes a set of concepts for analyzing and describing this process

Software curating : the politics of curating in/as (an) Open System(s)

The thesis examines how Information technologies have changed the practice of curating. It proposes an Interdisciplinary approach that directly links curating (often understood as an activity of artistic programming), computing (the activity of computer programming) and a relatively recent Interest In software art (in which programming Is understood as artistic practice). Although there Is much contemporary critical work and practice that Is described as art-oriented programming or software art, the thesis aims to explore a perceived gap In discussions around software curating. Curators working with online technologies are presented with the challenge of how to respond to new artistic forms that Involve programming: for Instance program-objects that display dynamic and transformative properties, and that are distributed over socio-technological networks. Although there are many examples of social platforms and highly relevant examples of online 'art platforms', these still largely operate In display mode replicating more conventional models of curating and the operations of art Institutions In general. The tendency Is for these curatorial online systems to concentrate on the display of executed code and pay less attention to source code. New sensibilities are required that simultaneously reflect the significance of source code as art, and software not as a production tool or a display platform but as cultural practice that Is analogous to curating. What Is distinctive about the thesis Is that It speculates on a curatorial model that emphasises the analogy to programming. Consequently, the thesis argues for online software systems that display properties of curating but reprocess established definitions by deliberately collapsing firm distinctions between the fields of programming, artistic practice and curatorial practice. To consider these Issues, the thesis brings together a number of Inter-related fields of critical Inquiry and situates curating In the context of theories of immateriality, a critical discourse around software art practice, and an understanding of open systems. The key Issue for the thesis becomes how power relations, control and agency are expressed In new curatorial forms that Involve programming and networks; In other words, the thesis Is concerned with the politics of curating In/as (an) open system(s). Indeed, curating Itself can be described In terms of open systems, Implying a state In which there Is continuous Interaction with the soclo-technological environment. The system Is opened up to communicative processes that Involve producers/users and to divergent exchanges that take place and that disrupt established social relations of production and distribution. Thus, and Importantly for an understanding of the power relations Involved, software opens up curating to dynamic possibilities and transformations beyond the usual Institutional model (analogous to the model of production associated with the industrial factory) Into the context of networks (and what Is referred to by the Autonomists as the 'social factory'). The suggestion Is that the curatorial process Is now closely Integrated with the dynamic soclo-technological networks and with software that Is not simply used to curate but demonstrates the activity of curatIng In Itself Consequently, the thesis offers an expanded description of curating with respect to software In which agency Is reconstituted to Include alternative dynamics of networks. The curatorial model Is not only theorlsed but also deployed In the production of experimental software for curating source code (kurator) that forms the practical part of the doctoral research. in addition to a written thesis and software, two further projects produced during the registration period 2002-2008 are Included in support of the overall thesis: a conference CuratIng, Immaterlafity, Systems (CIS) (Tate Modern, London 2005) and an edited book Curating immateriality: The Work of The Curator In the Age of Network Systems (CI) (Autonomedia, New York 2006). The kurator software Is a further development of the conference and subsequent book, and offers an online, user-moderated curatorial system for further public modification. In so doing, the argument Is that the curatorial process Is demonstrably a collective and distributed executable that displays machinic agency. This Is what Is referred to in the thesis as software curating.Faculty of Technology and Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth

The Song Sparrow and the Child: Claims of Science and Humanity

For centuries public claims on behalf of science have been made about our nature and the nature of the world as a whole. Over the twentieth century such claims on behalf of science have grown deeper and stronger. More and more they are total claims, cosmological in the largest sense, and they have evoked opposition equally deep and strong. There is the scientist in all of us. There is, too, the lawyer and law in all of us, which we realize the moment we serve as a witness or citizen juror. This book explores what the legal mind and ear can contribute to resolving this deep and growing conflict within and among us. The question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them. This was the prescient epigraph William James adopted for his lectures on pragmatism at the beginning of the twentieth century. In it is why this conflict is so deep at the beginning of the twenty-first and its resolution so important for our future together. We know that conventional limits and restraints can change with belief about the ultimate nature of things. The twentieth century has its warning examples, most gruesome where total vision has appeared in social and political thought. The connection between what we think about the nature of the world, and what we allow ourselves to do, is now widely felt, and, with good reason, widely feared. Our question here will be whether there are, in fact, openings in the total visions of today. The visions are of the facts of the world. What are the facts about the visions? The juror in us might naturally ask of a person testifying to them, How am I to take what you are saying? Do you actually believe what I hear you to say? This is empirical inquiry that we all engage in all the time without much thinking how we do it. At our best, especially in important matters, we reach for all the evidence. We listen to all a person says before concluding what any part of it might mean, and we treat what a person does as evidence of the meaning of what a person says. In this way we will be addressing here how far belief about the ultimate nature of things has actually changed over the twentieth century, in scientist or nonscientist. We will try to let ourselves be told what science is, on behalf of which people speak, and we will wonder how antiscience could ever really be a stance to take. Throughout, we will be asking how any total vision of the world can claim the true allegiance of human beings living and thinking together in it. This book is also about belief-or not-in spirit. The child learns to speak. The song sparrow comes to sing a beautiful song, special not just to its kind but to its individual throat and tongue. They are often compared, the development of individual song in the song sparrow and language in the child. Experiments that would be gruesome and called atrocity in a human context are performed on the young song sparrow. What is it that holds us back from performing the same experiment on the child-or letting it be done? What really, in thought and actual belief today? On such large questions touching our basic view of each other and ourselves, and other creatures too such as the song sparrow, we should be having a conversation or open meditation. The discussion ought not to be primarily argumentative, as we tend to understand argument. Binding you to me by successful moves of my mind would lose all that can be hoped for. It cannot be merely descriptive, with us absent from the picture. Nor should it try to move from one proposition to another whose meaning or truth depends on having done with the first. In any conversation or meditation we return more than once to the questions and examples with which we begin, and we will do so here. An earlier book of mine took a form that was meant to merge with and give the reader an experience of its subject, which was the legal form of thought. The form of this book too .reflects what we are talking about, a world that really does include ourselves.https://repository.law.umich.edu/books/1112/thumbnail.jp

Towards a (Meta-)Sociology of the Digital Sphere

Content: 1. Introductory considerations; 2. The functional universality of digital computer systems as a starting point; 3. Is Cyberspace spatial?; 4. Implications of Cyberspace for the level of Social Interaction and Social Systems; 4.1 Ease of exit and absence of density pressures; 4.2. The Softened Dictatorship of Time; 4.3 The absence of locational anchoring, bodily contacts and primary interpersonal perception; 4.4 The leveling and blurring of Real World status differentials; 4.5 The predominance of volatile, monothematic and project-related social relations; 4.6 The need for highly prespecified codes, symbolic patterns, problem definitions and environmental conditions; 4.7 The rising salience of credibility and trust; 4.8 The facilitated social integration of "strangers"; 4.9 Expansion of highly voluntary social interactions, relationships and roles; 4.10 The softened incompatibility between "egocentric" and "altruistic" action; 4.11 The intrinsic "softness" of digital social systems; 5. Implications of the Internet for the Cultural Level; 5.1 The softening of artifacts and the deletability of the past; 5.2 From producer-guided to receiver-guided culture; 5.3 The demise of stable ex ante classification schemes; 5.4 Toward a "Sampling Culture": from molecular to molar forms of production; 5.5 High mutual "permeabilities" as a condition for blendings and “crossovers”; 6. Implications on the Individual Level; 6.1 From offline individuals to online "dividuals" emanci-pated from body and space; 6.2 Freely chosen and freely modifiable self-constructed identities; 6.3 Support for "externalized selves" and microsocial cultures; 6.4 The blurring distinction between productive and receptive roles; 7. For conclusion: some epistemological and meta-theoretical consequences of Cyberspace for the social sciences; 7.1 The concepts of "Virtual Reality" and "Vireality"; 7.2 The Internet as a "hypersocial" space

A dynamical model of the distributed interaction of intracellular signals

A major goal of modern cell biology is to understand the regulation of cell behavior in the reductive terms of all the molecular interactions. This aim is made explicit by the assertion that understanding a cell\u27s response to stimuli requires a full inventory of details. Currently, no satisfactory explanation exists to explain why cells exhibit only a relatively small number of different behavioral modes. In this thesis, a discrete dynamical model is developed to study interactions between certain types of signaling proteins. The model is generic and connectionist in nature and incorporates important concepts from the biology. The emphasis is on examining dynamic properties that occur on short-term time scales and are independent of gene expression. A number of modeling assumptions are made. However, the framework is flexible enough to be extended in future studies. The dynamical states of the system are explored both computationally and analytically. Monte Carlo methods are used to study the state space of simulated networks over selected parameter regimes. Networks show a tendency to settle into fixed points or oscillations over a wide range of initial conditions. A genetic algorithm (GA) is also designed to explore properties of networks. It evolves a population of modeled cells, selecting and ranking them according to a fitness function, which is designed to mimic features of real biological evolution. An analogue of protein domain shuffling is used as the crossover operator and cells are reproduced asexually. The effects of changing the parameters of the GA are explored. A clustering algorithm is developed to test the effectiveness of the GA search at generating cells, which display a limited number of different behavioral modes. Stability properties of equilibrium states in small networks are analyzed. The ability to generalize these techniques to larger networks is discussed. Topological properties of networks generated by the GA are examined. Structural properties of networks are used to provide insight into their dynamic properties. The dynamic attractors exhibited by such signaling networks may provide a framework for understanding why cells persist in only a small number of stable behavioral modes