[NetBehaviour] exist.pl and communication, what next?

[Pall Thayer]

So finally Rob and Clement. Here's a response.

Affero? Never heard of it and I don't really get what they're about
from their website. I'll think about it.

I just finished writing a lengthy response to Curt Cloninger on
Rhizome regarding the philosophical side of the exist.pl project. Curt
knows what he's talking about and has made some really great comments
regarding the project. You can see my response at the bottom of this
thread (and of course you can see the comments from Curt and others in
there as well):

http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/38069

if you're interested.

Clement, regarding your comments. I'm glad you like the project. I do
too even though I think its appeal speaks to a rather limited
audience. The way of starting out small and simple and building on to
that is pretty much the way I produce my projects in general. The only
difference now is that I'm doing it in a public manner. It feels to me
like this is a more artistic way of working with code. It's a bit like
having a lump of clay and slowly molding it into something and seeing
where its own qualities, combined with the artists abilities, take it.
This is opposed to what I think is the "software engineer's" approach
which is to not start coding until you have a clear idea of what the
software is supposed to do and how. Perhaps not all software engineers
work that way but I remember reading that somewhere.

I think some of the stuff I wrote in my response to Curt on Rhizome
addresses some of the other issues you bring up. And by the way, it
might be interesting to note that what I mention about the "program's
perspective" as opposed to a human perspective is something that's
occurred to me over time more through the online discussions rather
than from the project itself. I think at first I was very much caught
up in the idea of trying to produce a program that has human-like
qualities but now I think it makes much more sense to try to think
about a program that tries to "discover itself" strictly as a computer
program. That being said, I'm not sure that it a computer program
would see any purpose in reproducing itself in numbers. That's a
quality that belongs to organic beings. They need to reproduce in
numbers to make up for those who may fall victim to infections and
disease. Sure, this has been known to happen to computer programs but
due to system calls this one won't run on Viroze, er... I mean Windows
;-) But I do think it would be interesting for it to seek out others
of "its own" at some point. Not sure how I plan to do that but it
sounds like a logical move. Perhaps at that point, the program would
see some benefit in self-replicating itself in numbers. I happened to
make a comment in the reply to Curt that I think would make a nice
addition for the next revision. I haven't wanted to use a database or
external file to enable the program to "remember" things but it
occurred to me as I was writing the Rhizome reply that perhaps it
could write information into its own source code as constants which
would allow it to submit things to a sort of "long-term memory"
internally. This also opens the path for it to start experimenting
with writing other things like executable code which sounds a bit like
the Genetic programming you mention. It just has to be careful not to
kill itself :-)

I guess that answers your comments too, Rob.

best r.
Pall



On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 6:09 PM, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:
> Pall Thayer wrote:
>> For
>> now here's the updated source code with the communications socket that
>> outputs the programs code when something is sent.
>
> Oh cool.
>
> The Affero GPL requires just this behaviour as part of programs covered
> by it, so it might be conceptually interesting to licence this version
> of existence.pl under the AGPL. Since you are the sole author you can
> always place it under a different licence or stop offering it under that
> licence. The AGPL would mean that the program would be protected against
> anyone else sterilizing it by changing it to not provide its source over
> the network, so it would help with its doomed quest for immortality.
>
> - Rob.
> _______________________________________________
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Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
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