Saturday 28 July 2007

Electric sheep and collective computer dreams

Just installed me a new screensaver -- the electric sheep. This is not just the most beautiful screensaver I've ever seen. It's a sort of genetic mutation engine. The screensaver is governed by a bunch of parameters ("genes"), which is a common thing. However, here these are not predefined. Numerous combinations are downloaded from the server (or maybe other clients), new combinations are generated by random mutations and uploaded again. You can vote for a combination and thus increase the chance that this specie survives. Thus, the Darwin law dictates that only the most beautiful sheep survive.

The sheep do resemble my computer's dreams indeed.

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