Maybe there's something beyond computation in the sense that we don't understand and we can't describe what's going on inside living systems using computation only. When we build computational models of living systems—such as a self-evolving system or an artificial immunology system—they're not as robust or rich as real living systems. Maybe we're missing something, but what could that something be?

Introduction

Rodney Brooks, a computer scientists and Director of the MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is looking for something beyond computation in the sense that we don't understand and we can't describe what's going on inside living systems using computation only. When we build computational models of living systems, such as a self-evolving system or an artificial immunology system — they're not as robust or rich as real living systems.

"Maybe we're missing something," Brooks asks, "but what could that something be?" He is puzzled that we've got all these biological metaphors that we're playing around with—artificial immunology systems, building robots that appear lifelike—but none of them come close to real biological systems in robustness and in performance. "What I'm worrying about," he says, "is that perhaps in looking at biological systems we're missing something that's always in there. You might be tempted to call it an essence of life, but I'm not talking about anything outside of biology or chemistry."

— JB

RODNEY A. BROOKS is Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of iRobot, a 120-person robotics company. Dr. Brooks also appeared as one of the four principals in the Errol Morris movie Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (named after one of his papers in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society) in 1997 (one of Roger Ebert's 10 best films of the year). He is the author of Flesh and Machines.

ROD BROOKS' Edge Bio Page 

"When we ask ourselves what the effect will be of time coming into focus the way space came into focus during the 19th century, we can count on the fact that the consequences will be big. It won't cause the kind of change in our spiritual life that space coming into focus did, because we've moved as far outside as we can get, pretty much. We won't see any further fundamental changes in our attitude towards art or religion ­ all that has happened already. We're apt to see other incalculably large affects on the way we deal with the world and with each other, and looking back at this world today it will look more or less the way 1800 did from the vantage point of 1900. Not just a world with fewer gadgets, but a world with a fundamentally different relationship to space and time. From the small details of our crummy software to the biggest and most abstract issues of how we deal with the world at large, this is a big story."

DAVID GELERNTER is a professor of computer science at Yale and chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies (New Haven). His research centers on information management, parallel programming, and artificial intelligence. The "tuple spaces" introduced in Nicholas Carriero and Gelernter's Linda system (1983) are the basis of many computer communication systems worldwide. Dr. Gelernter is the author of Mirror Worlds, The Muse in the Machine, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair, and Drawiing a Life: Surviving the Unabomber.

David Gelernter's Edge Bio page

"One of the striking things about being a computer scientist in this age is that all sorts of other people are happy to tell us that what we do is the central metaphor of everything, which is very ego gratifying. We hear from various quarters that our work can serve as the best understanding - if not in the present but any minute now because of Moore's law - of everything from biology to the economy to aesthetics, child-rearing, sex, you name it. I have found myself being critical of what I view as this overuse as the computational metaphor. My initial motivation was because I thought there was naive and poorly constructed philosophy at work. It's as if these people had never read philosophy at all and there was no sense of epistemological or other problems."

JARON LANIER, a computer scientist and musician, is best known for his work in virtual reality. He is the lead scientist for the National Tele-Immersion Initiative, a consortium of universities studying the implications and applications of next-generation Internet technologies.

[Click here for Jaron Lanier's Edge Bio page] 

It seems to me that what we're seeing in the software area, and this is the scary part for human society, is the beginning of a kind of dispossession. People are talking about this as dispossession that only comes from piracy, like Napster and Gnutella where the rights of artists are being violated by people sharing their work. But there's another kind of dispossession, which is the inability to actually buy a product. The idea is here: you couldn't buy this piece of software, you could only license it on a day by day, month by month, year by year basis; As this idea spreads from software to music, films, books, human civilization based on property fundamentally changes.

JORDAN POLLACK is a computer science and complex systems professor at Brandeis University. His laboratory's work on AI, Artificial Life, Neural Networks, Evolution, Dynamical Systems, Games, Robotics, Machine Learning, and Educational Technology has been reported on by the New York Times, Time, Science, NPR, Slashdot.org and many other media sources worldwide.

[Click here for Jordan Pollack's Edge Bio page] 

Click Here for Ray Kurtzweil's Bio Page

RAY KURZWEIL: ONE HALF OF AN ARGUMENT 

In Jaron Lanier's Postscript, which he wrote after he and I spoke in succession at a technology event, Lanier points out that we agree on many things, which indeed we do. So I'll start in that vein as well. First of all, I share the world's esteem for Jaron's pioneering work in virtual reality, including his innovative contemporary work on the "Teleimmersion" initiative, and, of course, in coining the term "virtual reality." I probably have higher regard for virtual reality than Jaron does, but that comes back to our distinct views of the future.

Silicon-based life and dust-based life are fiction and not fact. I use them as examples to illustrate an abstract argument. The examples are taken from science-fiction but the abstract argument is rigorous science. The abstract concepts are valid, whether or not the examples are real. The concepts are digital-life and analog-life. The concepts are based on a broad definition of life. For the purposes of this discussion, life is defined as a material system that can acquire, store, process, and use information to organize its activities. In this broad view, the essence of life is information, but information is not synonymous with life. To be alive, a system must not only hold information but process and use it. It is the active use of information, and not the passive storage, that constitutes life.

Is Life Analog or Digital?
Question for Edge discussion group from Freeman Dyson 

FREEMAN DYSON is professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. His professional interests are in mathematics and astronomy. Among his many books are Disturbing The Universe, Infinite In All Directions Origins Of Life, From Eros To Gaia, Imagined Worlds, and The Sun, The Genome, And The Internet.

Click here for Freeman Dyson's Edge Bio page.

THE REALITY CLUB George Dyson, Cliff Pickover, Joseph Traub, Jaron Lanier, Stewart Brand, William H. Calvin, Marvin Minsky, Charles Simonyi, Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Lee Smolin, Philip W. Anderson, Marc D. Hauser, Jordan B. Pollack, Nicholas Humphrey, Steve Grand, W. Daniel Hillis, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Jaron Lanier, John Baez, Terry Sejnowski

Response to the responders from Freeman Dyson