Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 712

Rudy Rucker ( http://www.mathcs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker/ ) has a new book coming out this fall entitled "Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul". It is now listed on Amazon -

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=glance&s=books

I've had a look at an advanced draft of this - it is a fun book. I heartily recommend it. Here is part of the Amazon "abstract" -

"The chip-in-a-box computers so popular in our time have acted as a kind of microscope, letting us see into the secret machinery of the world. In Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, Rucker—known as the father of cyberpunk— uses whimsical drawings, fables, and humor to demonstrate that everything is a computation—that thoughts, computations, and physical processes are all the same. Rucker discusses the linguistic and computational advances that make this kind of "digital philosophy" possible, and explains how, like every great new principle, the computational worldview contains the seeds of a next step."

He has a page for the book, with cover, table of contents, some intro material etc, here -

http://www.rudyrucker.com/lifebox/

Enjoy.

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Registered: Jul 2004
Posts: 31

thanks jason, very much for the reference! i've pre-ordered this book.

while it's clear from some of his writings and interviewshat rudy may have overdone the mind-altering drugs in the old days, he has always been more intreresting than most of the 'straight-and-narrow' scientists i have known. and he was one of the 'original' CA evangelicals (he didn't do any ground-breaking work in the field but has been a major enthusiast for the field - actually, that description is applicable to me as well, i suppose since i wrote texts on how to to do CA modeling in Mathematica for various scientific subjects as well as the pseudo-scientific field known as 'social science' ).

i recommend that people interested in CA's download

http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/

his 'manual' that went with his CA programs for a fun read [i note that rudy didn't use Mathematica in his CA work though that is OBVIOUSLY the best language to use (which i think is the REAL reason stephen created it] .

__________________
"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.". - H.D. Thoreau

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