🚂📚 Coming soon from Enchanted Bit! What if some of the earliest "AI takeover" stories weren't about computers—but steam locomotives? We're publishing brand new editions of two remarkable and long-overlooked Victorian sci-fi novels by W. Grove. More: www.enchantedbit.com #scifi #AI #HistoryOfAI

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 (I'm glad to say he passed it!), and was 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 about Barricelli's paper, its context, his other papers on symbiogenesis and evolution and the significance and legacy of the work today. Both have today been submitted to the Artificial Life journal 👍🎉 [2/2]

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

Wonderful to see @librarycongress.bsky.social'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/...

Lost 19th century film by Méliès discovered at the Library | Timeless

Library conservators recently made a startling discovery in a batch of decaying film reels -- a long-lost 1897 film by early cinema icon George Méliès. The French magician-turned-filmmaker's

blogs.loc.gov

Does anyone else get review requests from @plosone.org for papers in subject areas that have nothing whatsoever to do with your expertise? I've had two of these in the last month, the latest today from a Dr. Margubur Rahaman. It's basically spam and very disappointing to see PLOS behave like this 😒

Two amazing opportunities to work in Helsinki in Christian Guckelsberger's wonderful group, and collaborate with equally amazing researchers in Japan and Australia!

Christian Guckelsberger@creativeendvs.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Jobs! The Autotelic Interaction Research Group is looking for (1) creative practitioners and (2) theory researchers to work on "Autotelic Creative Artificial Intelligence" (ACAI): (1) PhD in Creative Practices (2+2 years): lnkd.in/dPBG47rM (2) Postdoctoral Researcher (2 years): lnkd.in/dMisM_bf

Good grief

📢 Call for Papers: #ALIFE2026 Waterloo 🇨🇦 & online | 17–21 Aug 2026 📝 Full Papers & Summaries: 30 March 2026 📌 Special Sessions, Workshops & Tutorials proposals: 20 Feb 2026 Theme: Living and Lifelike Complex Adaptive Systems 2026.alife.org

Save the date! The annual #Conference on #ArtificialLife - #ALIFE2026 will take place in Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), 17-21 August 2026. More details coming soon!

📣 #ALIFE2026 Call for Workshops, Tutorials & Special Sessions at the Conference on Artificial Life, themed “Living and Lifelike Complex Adaptive Systems.” 🗓 August 17–21, 2026 | 📍 Waterloo, Canada ⏰ Deadline: 20 Feb 2026 (AoE)

On BBC Radio 4 yesterday @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social 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/... (starts at 2:47:42).

Today - 29/07/2025 - BBC Sounds

News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

bbc.co.uk

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/publicationD...

Super excited to have had a phone call and ongoing conversation with Nils Aall Barricelli's nephew. While working at IAS in Princeton, Nils would have discussions with Albert Einstein on the bus - the two of them were some of the few who did not have cars!

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

I once again find myself lured back to the National Library of Scotland in search of stories about self-reproducing machines. This time I'm chasing up some leads that help fill the relative paucity of contributions covered in "Rise of the Self-Replicators" over the 1880s and 1890s. More info soon!

Save the date! The annual #Conference on #ArtificialLife - #ALIFE2025 will take place in the heart of Kyoto, Japan, from 6-10 October 2025. The conference logo, official website launch, and more details coming soon!

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 www.nature.com/collections/...

Unnatural Histories: Investigating the Improbable with Experimental Evolution and Artificial Life

This collection invite submissions that employ experimental and theoretical approaches to investigate life's alternative possibilities. Through this ...

nature.com

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 www.tim-taylor.com/selfrepbook/...

Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve

In Rise of the Self-Replicators we delve into the deep history of thought about machines, AI and robots that can reproduce and evolve. Although these might seem like very modern concepts, we show that...

tim-taylor.com

I've finally got a copy of Nils Barricelli's 1st paper on Artificial Life, in Italian (1954). Would be great to get it translated into English. My preference would be to have this done by a skilled human translator rather than AI. Any bilingual Italian-English folk out there who might be interested?

I'm enjoying reading Mitchell Waldrop's venerable account of the origin and early years of @sfiscience.bsky.social, published in 1992. Wonderful to learn that John Holland developed his first classifier system in machine code (not even assembly language) on his Commodore computer at home 👏

I'm pleased to announce a new second edition of the author-formatted version of our book Rise of the Self-Replicators, which includes my 2024 afterword (originally published in the Artificial Life journal) as an extra chapter. More details & free download: www.tim-taylor.com/news/posts/2...