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Adding by subtracting

Adding by subtracting

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Adding by subtracting

There won’t be posts after this one on this thing for a couple of weeks. I must navigate the dangerous, relative infested waters of the holidays.

I need to be able to show that the way we program our machine can be made to run any program, at least in principle. On the other hand, I’d very much like to switch gear, and get to talking about gear soon.

Here’s one more post on using subleq. I think that will do for now.
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Ep 106: The perceptron

Ep 106: The perceptron

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The perceptron

In 1957, Frank Rosenblatt came up with the perceptron. The perceptron is a simple neural network that was able to recognize simple shapes. Unfortunately, Rosenblatt got a little over excited, and made over inflated statements about what his perceptron would be able to do. After the 1969 publication of Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert’s book, “Perceptron,” which debunked many of Rosenblatt’s claims and pointed out some of the inherent limitations of the perceptron algorithm, interest and funding for neural networks dropped drastically.

Here are a couple of articles about the perceptron and the early history of neural network design.

History of the Perceptron

A ‘Brief’ History of Neural Nets and Deep Learning

Ep 103: Tierra, bits bytes and life

Ep 103: Tierra, bits bytes and life

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Tierra, bits bytes and life

In the early 1990/s, a biologist named Thomas Ray created a computer program that acted like a computer infected with many little programs. He called it Tierra, Spanish for “Earth.” The little programs could, and did, mutate, self-replicate, and evolve in strange and wonderful ways.

Here’s the home page for Tierra.

Tierra home page

Here’s a good article about Tierra.

Artificial Life – Tools Ideas Environment

And here’s a nice video on the Tierra system, and the story behind its creation.

Project Tierra

Ep 102: Core Wars

Ep 102: Core Wars

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Core Wars

In 1984, the game Core Wars was written and introduced to the public. Contestants write programs in a special language called redcode, and attempt to halt or overwrite the other programs in order to be the last game standing.

Here’s a beginner’s guide to redcode

The beginners’ guide to Redcode

Here is a link to a page that has html versions of the original scientific American articles that introduced the game.

A. K. Dewdney’s Scientific American Articles on Core War

Here are a couple more links to pages about the game.

Core War

Corewar – the Ultimate Programming Game

Ep 101: Darwin, the game

Ep 101: Darwin, the game

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Darwin, the game

In the summer of 1961, a game was created. It was a programming game. Players would write programs that would compete against one another to try and copy themselves as often as possible, and attempt to deactivate the other programs.

Here are a couple of links with more information on the game.

Darwin, a Game of Survival of the Fittest among Programs

Darwin

Ep 100: Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet

Ep 100: Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet

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Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet

I wanted to do something special for episode 100. It snuck up on me, and I never figured out what to do. I decided to share a couple of other projects, outside of the podcast.

One is a blog series I’m working on, about how computers compute.

The other is an experiment with digital life.

No link for the latter as of yet. Stay tuned!

Ep 99: 256 simpler games

Ep 99: 256 simpler games

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256 simpler games

In the 1980/s, Stephen Wolfram began considering and experimenting with elementary cellular automata. These are, instead of a 2-dimensional grid, just a one-dimensional row of cells or squares. At least one of these simpler games, rule 110, turns out to be Turing complete, just like Conway’s game of life.

Here are links to more information about rule 110.

Rule 110

The Significance of Universality in Rule 110

Here’s a link to the online atlas of elementary cellular automata.

Wolfram Atlas: Elementary Cellular Automata

Here’s a link to Stephen Wolfram’s book on the subject.

A New Kind of Science

And last but not least, here’s a link to a page about an experiment, that includes some cellular automata you can listen to. The active cells have been mapped to notes on a musical scale.

Hearing Cellular Automata