Darwin & Technology

Throughout our class we have discussed many themes based on our studies of Charles Darwin. More specifically we have looked at the hot topic of evolution and creationism. During our classes I typically entertained the theory of evolution much more than I did creationism; Karl Sims describing evolution being the repeated cycle of reproduction with variation and selection of the most fit organisms (par. 2.1). Looking at this definition I began to ponder about our future. My revelation was that Darwin's theory of evolution has risen us up to a level of control where we produce technology that contradicts the evolutionary purpose of adapting. Based on our studies of Charles Darwin I wonder where evolution will take us in the future?

We, the human race, have evolved into the dominant species on Earth and have continued to grow to the point where we adapt our environment to ourselves rather than adapting to it. I found this thought very interesting because as De Candolle states in the book "Darwin", "all nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature" (82.) With exception to fighting with each other we have essentially dominated almost every conner of the globe using technological innovations. Humans have reached a height in evolution to the point where we can apply our knowledge and create technologies and equipment to adapt our environment to our own needs. Compare this short amount of time to to the thousands of generations it would take to adapt our bodies to a given place and you can say we have come a long way.

This technological crouch that we put on evolution is becoming more evident than ever. With globalization and the international merging of economies, not to mention the demand for mass communication, it is easy to say we rely heavily on technology, more specifically computers. I realized this when I was staring at my own computer in class when my screen saver popped up. The screen saver I have is called Electric Sheep which is a series pixels that morph into different structures, textures, and motions. I remembered someone describing this to me who said it imitates evolution. Looking into Electric Sheep I found that it uses "evolutionary techniques of variation and selection to create complex simulated structures, textures, and motions for use in computer graphics and animation" (Karl Sims, par. 1). More specifically the process involves the use of algorithmic and mathematical methods to generate complex models with nearly infinite levels of detail.

Similar to biological evolution, simulated evolution uses the same concepts of genotypes and phenotypes. It includes the same process of expressing phenotypes generated from genotypes, selecting the fittest phenotype, and reproducing it to generate new genotypes with respect to variation that are random as apposed to being general. What this means is an image (sheep) is produced from a genetic algorithm, or DNA in biological terms, and reproduces a variation of that information with another sheep which will entail the next image. As this process is repeated the image is varied based on those altered algorithms. Creating these fractal images is simply simulating evolution by interpolating/combining the sheep's fractal code with another sheep which is loosely called mating or breeding. Stated by Edward J. Bedwell and David S. Ebert,"This sketch presents a system that combines implicit surfaces, as modeling primitives, with genetic programming to facilitate automated generation of exceedingly complex models" (Artificial Evolution of Implicit Surfaces)

Since when were we able to mate or breed technology and what does that mean for our future? Apparently its been happening for a while says Jamais Cascio, "It’s visible in the hive mind of the Internet, in the powerful tools for simulation and visualization that are jump-starting new scientific disciplines." He had the same revelation I did, that no matter what happens in our future we now posses the tools to survive, "we don’t have to rely solely on natural evolutionary processes to boost our intelligence, we can do it ourselves" (Get Smarter). We have now evolved to be able to not only change our environment to suit our needs but also to where we can imitate evolution itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e7lPYTIaRQ

Work Cited

Bedwell, Edward J. "International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques." Artificial Evolution of Implicit Surfaces (1998). Print.

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic." The Atlantic: Breaking News, Analysis and Opinion on politics, business, culture, international, science, technology, food and society. 6 Feb. 2007. Web.

Darwin, Charles. "Selections from Darwin's Work." pp 67-254 in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.

Dick, Philip. The Philip K Dick Reader. New York: Citadel, 1987. Print. Lyell, Charles. Principals of Geology. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Print.

Insolentdragon. "You Tube- Electric Sheep." You Tube. You Tube, 28 Feb. 2007. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. .

Sims, Karl. "International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques." Artificial Evolution for Computer Graphics (1991): 319-21. Print.