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An introduction to the journal is presented about articles describing developments in living technology.

The concept of living technology-that is, technology that is based on the powerful core features of life-is explained and illustrated with examples from artificial life software, reconfigurable and evolvable hardware, autonomously self-reproducing robots, chemical protocells, and hybrid electronic-chemical systems. We consider living technolog y to be secondary when its core systems are derived from other living organisms. Primary living technology is currently emerging, distinctive, and potentially powerful, motivating this review. We trace living technology's connections with artificial life (soft, hard, and wet), synthetic biology (top-down and bottom-up), and the convergence of nano-, bio-, information, and cognitive (NBIC) technologies. We end with a brief look at the social and ethical questions generated by the prospect of living technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Points out that wet artificial life, which involves the creation of lifelike systems from biochemical substances in the laboratory, may be the source of especially exciting scientific innovations in the next five years. Ultimate goal of creating artificial cells out of biochemicals; Self-organizing and self-replicating entities built from simple organic and inorganic substances.

Artificial life attempts to understand the essential general properties of living systems by synthesizing life-like behavior in software, hardware and biochemicals. As many of the essential abstract properties of living systems (e.g. autonomous adaptive and intelligent behavior) are also studied by cognitive science, artificial life and cognitive science have an essential overlap. This review highlights the state of the art in artificial life with respect to dynamical hierarchies, molecular self-organization, evolutionary robotics, the evolution of complexity and language, and other practical applications. It also speculates about future connections between artificial life and cognitive science. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We describe a novel Internet-based method for building consensus and clarifying conflicts in large stakeholder groups facing complex issues, and we use the method to survey and map the scientific and organizational perspectives of the artificial life community during the Seventh international Conference on Artificial Life (summer 2000). The issues addressed in this survey included artificial life's main successes, main failures, main open scientific questions, and main strategies for the future, as well as the benefits and pitfalls of creating a professional society for artificial life. By illuminating the artificial lite community's collective perspective on these issues, this survey illustrates the value of such methods of harnessing the collective intelligence of large stakeholder groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new interdisciplinary science of ALife has had a connection with the arts from its inception. This paper provides an overview of ALife, reviews its key scientific challenges and discusses its philosophical implications. It ends with a few words about the implications of ALife for the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many artificial life researchers stress the interdisciplinary character of the field. Against such a backdrop, this report reviews and discusses artificial life, as it is depicted in, and as it interfaces with, adjacent disciplines (in particular, philosophy, biology, and linguistics), and in the light of a specific historical example of interdisciplinary research (namely cybernetics) with which artificial life shares many features. This report grew out of a workshop held at the Sixth European Conference on Artificial Life in Prague and features individual contributions from the workshop's eight speakers, plus a section designed to reflect the debates that took place during the workshop's discussion sessions. The major theme that emerged during these sessions was the identity and status of artificial life as a scientific endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate whether John Holland's Echo model exemplifies his theory of complex adaptive systems. After reviewing Holland's theory of complex adaptive systems and describing his Echo model, we describe and explain the characteristic evolutionary behavior observed in a series of Echo model runs. We conclude that Echo lacks the diversity of hierarchically organized aggregates that typify complex adaptive systems, and we explore possible explanations for this failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article lists fourteen open problems in artificial life, each of which is a grand challenge requiring a major advance on a fundamental issue for its solution. Each problem is briefly explained, and, where deemed helpful, some promising paths to its solution are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces developments in the 'Artificial Life' journal's editorial structure. Interdisciplinary breadth of contemporary artificial life; Agent-based evolutionary algorithms; Satellite workshops at artificial life conferences.

Introduces the articles featured in the December 2001 issue of the journal 'Artificial Life.'