Summerhall is home to over 100 artists and small tech companies in Edinburgh, myself included. Please consider signing this petition to stop developers bringing in the bulldozers and building yet more student accommodation and hotels. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitio… via @38degrees

Author-formatted versions of our translation of Nils Barricelli's 1954 paper "Esempi Numerici di Processi di Evoluzione" & our commentary on it are now on my website! It was the first journal paper to describe computational experiments in artificial life. tim-taylor.com/news/posts/20…

In 2024 I found two little-known Victorian novels exploring questions central to Artificial Life: machine autonomy, reproduction and evolution. I’m now bringing them back into print through @EnchantedBit. Here’s the story: tim-taylor.com/blog/posts/20…

I'm very excited to have got my hands on this, a surprisingly hard-to-find copy of the English translation of Émile Souvestre's 1846 dystopian sci-fi novel "Le Monde tel qu'il sera", complete with the beautiful original illustrations.

I'm so very sad to hear of the passing of Inman Harvey. He was my PhD examiner in 1999 (he passed it!), and a mentor, inspiration and friend not just to me but to a whole generation (and more) of Artificial Life researchers. He will be very sorely missed, but his legacy lives on.

... Along with the translation, we've also written an in-depth commentary on Barricelli's paper, its context, his other papers on symbiogenesis & evolution and the significance and legacy of the work today. Both have today been submitted to @ARTL_journal 👍🎉 [2/2]

It's taken way longer than originally anticipated (18 months), but I'm super excited to say that the project to translate Nils Aall Barricelli's groundbreaking 1954 paper on computational evolution/artificial life (Esempi Numerici di Processi di Evoluzione) is now complete! [1/2]

Wonderful to see @librarycongress's restoration of George Méliès' long-lost 1897 film "Gugusse et l'Automate" ("Gugusse and the automaton"). This is the first depiction on film of an automaton (or robot, to use a term that wouldn't be coined until 1920) blogs.loc.gov/loc/2026/02/lo…

Two amazing opportunities to work in Helsinki in Christian Guckelsberger's wonderful group, and collaborate with equally amazing researchers in Japan and Australia! bsky.app/profile/creativeend…

Good grief

On @BBCr4today yesterday @j_amesmarriott used a brilliant junk food metaphor to describe search results produced by AI chatbots, calling them "ultra-processed information, superficially nutritious but actually pretty empty." Listen at bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002gf… (starts at 2:47:42).

In 1951, in between working on his application to visit John von Neumann's Electronic Computer Project group at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Nils Aall Barricelli also found time to file a patent for "An Improved Chest of Drawers"! 😁 worldwide.espacenet.com/publ…

I'm looking forward to reading this novel, written by microbiologist Richard Goodman under the pen name Bonham Richards. Goodman was a friend of ALife pioneer Nils Aall Barricelli, and George Dyson tells me that the character Angelo Kraakmo in the book is based upon Barricelli!

The npj Complexity journal has an open call for a new collection topic "Unnatural Histories: Investigating the Improbable with Experimental Evolution and Artificial Life". Accepting submissions from now up to 12 Sept 2025 nature.com/collections/hahjd…

I'm happy to announce that the free online version of "Rise of the Self-Replicators" has now been updated to the 2nd edition of the author-formatted version of the book, which includes the 2024 afterword as an additional chapter. Find the online version at tim-taylor.com/selfrepbook/w…