Tim Taylor
drtimt.bsky.social
Tim Taylor
@drtimt.bsky.social
Scientist, historian, author & coder of Artificial Life. Board Member of the International Society for Artificial Life / Senior Research Contractor at Monash Uni / Independent Researcher. Live in Edinburgh, Scotland 🌈

https://timt.co
Pinned
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...
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
July 30, 2025 at 8:57 AM
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...
July 15, 2025 at 12:06 PM
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!
July 5, 2025 at 3:42 PM
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!
March 18, 2025 at 10:35 AM
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!
January 14, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Tim Taylor
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!
January 5, 2025 at 8:29 AM
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 ...
www.nature.com
December 19, 2024 at 11:29 AM
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...
www.tim-taylor.com
December 9, 2024 at 3:56 PM
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?
December 4, 2024 at 10:26 AM
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 👏
October 18, 2024 at 6:51 PM
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...
October 10, 2024 at 2:17 PM