Darwin Among the Machines

by George B. Dyson

  29. [C.M.], “An expeditious method for conveying intelligence,” Scots’ Magazine 15 (17 February 1745): 73; reprinted in John J. Fahie, A History of Electric Telegraphy to the Year 1837, chiefly compiled from original sources, and hitherto unpublished documents (London: E. & F. Spon, 1884), 68–71.

  30. Fahie, Electric Telegraphy, 221.

  31. Francis Ronalds, “Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph” (London: R. Hunter, 1823), 3; quoted in Fahie, Electric Telegraphy, 138.

  32. Francis Ronalds to Lord Melville, 11 July 1816; in Fahie, Electric Telegraphy, 135.

  33. John Barrow to Francis Ronalds, 5 August 1816; in Fahie, Electric Telegraphy, 136.

  34. André-Marie Ampère, Recueil d’observations électro-dynamiques contentant divers mémoires, notices, extraits de lettres ou d’ouvrages périodiques sur les sciences, relatifs à l’action mutuelle de deux courans électriques . . . (Paris: Crochard, 1822), 19. (Author’s translation.)

  35. John von Neumann, lecture given at University of Illinois, December 1949, in Arthur Burks, ed., Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (Urbana: Universsity of Illinois Press, 1966), 75.

  36. John von Neumann, “Defense in Atomic War,” Journal of the American Ordnance Association (1955): 22; reprinted in John von Neumann, Theory of Games, Astrophysics, Hydrodynamics and Meteorology, vol. 6 of Collected Works (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1963), 524.

  37. von Neumann, “Defense in Atomic War” (1955), 23; (1963), 525.

  38. RAND Articles of Incorporation, 1948, in The RAND Corporation: The First Fifteen Years (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1963).

  39. Contract of 2 March 1946 establishing project RAND; in Bruce Smith, The RAND Corporation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 30.

  40. A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1955; reprint. New York: Free Press, 1966), xii (page citation is to the reprint edition).

  41. Louis Ridenour and Francis Clauser, Preliminary Design of an Experimental Earth-Circling Spaceship, U.S. Air Force Project RAND Report SM-11827, 2 May 1946, 2, 16.

  42. RAND, The RAND Corporation, 23.

  43. Paul Baran, interview by Judy O’Neill, 5 March 1990, OH 182, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

  44. J. M. Chester, Cost of a Hardened, Nationwide Buried Cable Network, RAND Corporation Memorandum RM-2627-PR, 1 October 1960.

  45. Baran, interview.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Paul Baran, Summary Overview, vol. 11 of On Distributed Communications, RAND Corporation Memorandum RM-3767-PR, August 1964, 1.

  48. Paul Baran, “Packet Switching,” in John C. McDonald, ed., Fundamentals of Digital Switching, 2d ed. (New York: Plenum Publishing, 1990), 204.

  49. Baran, interview.

  50. Paul Baran, Reliable Digital Communications Systems Utilizing Unreliable Network Repeater Nodes, RAND Corporation Memorandum P-1995, 27 May 1960, 1–2.

  51. Baran, Digital Communications Systems, 7.

  52. Paul Baran, History, Alternative Approaches, and Comparisons, vol. 5 of On Distributed Communications, RAND Corporation Memorandum RM-3097-PR, August 1964, 8.

  53. Warren S. McCulloch, in Claude Shannon, “Presentation of a Maze-Solving Machine,” in Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead, and H. L. Teuber, eds., Cybernetics: Circular, Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems, Transactions of the Eighth Cybernetics Conference, March 15–16, 1951 (New York: Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation, 1952); reprinted in N. J. A. Sloane and Aaron D. Wyner eds., Claude Elwood Shannon: Collected Papers (New York: IEEE Press, 1993), 687.

  54. Baran, On Distributed Communications, vol. 5, iii.

  55. Baran, “Packet Switching,” 209.

  56. Baran, On Distributed Communications, vol. 1, 25.

  57. Ibid., 24.

  58. Ibid., 29.

  59. Paul Baran, Security, Secrecy, and Tamper-free Considerations, vol. 9 of On Distributed Communications, RAND Corporation Memorandum RM-3765-PR, August 1964, v.

  60. Baran, interview.

  61. Ibid.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 9

  1. Stanislaw Ulam, in Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, eds., Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, A Symposium Held at the Wistar Institute, April 25–26, 1966 (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute, 1967), 42.

  2. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1944); 2d ed., New York: John Wiley, 1947), 2 (page citation is to the 2d edition).

  3. Loren Eiseley, Darwin’s Century (New York: Doubleday, 1958), 39.

  4. André-Marie Ampère, Considérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu (Lyons, France: Frères Perisse, 1802), 3. (Author’s translation.)

  5. Jacob Marschak, “Neumann’s and Morgenstern’s New Approach to Static Economics,” Journal of Political Economy 54, no. 2 (April 1946): 114.

  6. J. D. Williams, The Compleat Strategyst (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1954), 216.

  7. John Nash, Parallel Control, RAND Corporation Research Memorandum RM-1361, 27 August 1954, 14.

  8. John von Neumann, “A Model of General Economic Equilibrium,” Review of Economic Studies 13 (1945): 1.

  9. John von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958), 79–82.

  10. John von Neumann, 1948, “General and Logical Theory of Automata,” in Lloyd A. Jeffress, ed., Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior: The Hixon Symposium (New York: Hafner, 1951), 24.

  11. Stan Ulam, quoted by Gian-Carlo Rota, “The Barrier of Meaning,” Letters in Mathematical Physics 10 (1985): 99.

  12. von Neumann, “Automata,” 24.

  13. Stan Ulam, quoted by Rota, “The Barrier of Meaning,” 98.

  14. D. E. Rumelhart and J. E. McClelland, Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, vol. 1 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), 132.

  15. William H. Calvin, The Cerebral Symphony (New York: Bantam, 1990), 118.

  16. Thomas Hobbes, De Cive (in Latin) (Paris: privately printed, 1642), chap. 12, part 5; translated by Hobbes as Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society (London: Richard Royston, 1651); reprinted, with an introduction by Sterling Lamprecht, ed., as De Cive; or, The Citizen (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), 133.

  17. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651), 130–131.

  18. John Aubrey, in Aubrey’s Brief Lives: Edited from the Original Manuscripts and with a Life of John Aubrey by Oliver Lawson Dick (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1949), 237.

  19. Sir Robert Southwell to William Petty, 28 September 1687, in The Petty-Southwell Correspondence, 1676–1687, Edited from the Bowood Papers by the Marquis of Landsowne (London: Constable & Co., 1928), 287.

  20. Aubrey, 238.

  21. Ibid., 239.

  22. Sir William Petty, 7 November 1668, “An attempt to demonstrate that an Engine may be fix’d in a good Ship of 5 or 600 Tonn to give her fresh way at Sea in a calm,” in Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, The Life of Sir William Petty, 1623–1687 (London: John Murray, 1895), 122–124.

  23. William Petty to Robert Southwell, 26 February 1680/81, in The Petty-Southwell Correspondence, 87.

  24. Lord Shelborne (Charles Petty), dedication to William Petty, Political Arithmetick; or, a Discourse concerning the extent and value of Lands, People, buildings; Husbandry, Manufacture, Commerce, Fishery, Artizans, Seamen, Soldiers; Public Revenues, Interest, Taxes . . . (London, 1690).

  25. Sir William Petty, 1682, Quantulumcunque Concerning Money (London: A. & J. Churchill, 1695), 165.

  26. Hilary C. Jenkinson, “Exchequer Tallies,” Archaeologia, 2d ser., 12 (1911): 368.

  27. John Giuseppi, The Bank of England: A History from Its Foundation in 1694 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966), 105.
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  28. Alfred Smee, Instinct and Reason: Deduced from Electro-biology (London: Reeve, Benham & Reeve, 1850), xxix-xxxii.

  29. Jenkinson, “Exchequer Tallies,” 369.

  30. Francis Cradocke, An Expedient For taking away all Impositions, and raising a Revenue without Taxes, By Erecting Bankes for the Encouragement of Trade (London: Henry Seile, 1660), 1.

  31. Henry Robinson, Certain Proposals In order to the Peoples Freedome and Accommodation in some Particulars (London: M. Simmons, 1652), 18.

  32. R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman, “A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems,” Communications of the ACM 21, no. 2 (February 1978): 120.

  33. John Wilkins, Mercury; or, the Secret and Swift messenger, shewing how a man may with privacy and speed Communicate his thoughts to a Friend at any distance (London: John Maynard, 1641), 169–170.

  34. Ibid., 167.

  35. Eric Hughes, “A Long-term Perspective on Electronic Commerce,” Release 1.0 (31 March 1995): 8.

  36. Gerald Thompson, “John von Neumann’s Contributions to Mathematical Programming Economics,” in M. Dore, S. Chakravarty, and Richard Goodwin, eds., John von Neumann and Modern Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 232.

  37. Oskar Morgenstern, “The Theory of Games,” Scientific American 180, no. 5 (May 1949): 23.

  38. Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 18, 322.

  39. Samuel Butler, Luck, or Cunning, as the main means of Organic Modification? (London: Trübner & Co., 1887); reprinted as vol. 8 of The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler (London: Jonathan Cape, 1924), 98.

  40. Adam Smith, 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, reprint of the 5th ed., vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1904), 477–478.

  41. Paul Baran, “Is the UHF Frequency Shortage a Self Made Problem?” address to the Marconi Centennial Symposium, Bologna, Italy, 23 June 1995.

  42. Carver Mead, Analog VLSI and Neural Systems (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1989), 147.

  43. Irving J. Good, 1980, Ethical Machines (unpublished draft prepared for the Tenth Machine Intelligence Workshop, Case Western Reserve University, April 20–25, 1981), ix.

  44. Irving J. Good, “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,” Advances in Computers 6 (1965): 39–40.

  45. William Petty to Robert Southwell, letter, 1677, “The Scale of Creatures,” The Petty Papers: Some Unpublished Writings of Sir William Petty, Edited from the Bowood Papers by the Marquis of Landsowne, vol. 2 (London: Constable & Co., 1927), 21.

  46. W. Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (New York: Appleton, 1896), 202.

  47. Robert Hooke, The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, containing his Cutlerian lectures, and other discourses (London: Richard Waller, 1705), 140.

  CHAPTER 10

  1. Joe Van Lone, Cablevision Inc., quoted by Jerry Michalski in Release 1.0, 22 November 1993, 6.

  2. Richard Feynman, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” Engineering and Science 23 (1960): 26.

  3. Ibid., 36.

  4. J. B. S. Haldane, “On Being the Right Size,” Possible Worlds (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928), 28.

  5. W. Ross Ashby, “Principles of the Self-Organizing System,” in Heinz von Foerster and George W. Zopf, eds., Principles of Self-Organization, Transactions of the University of Illinois Symposium on Self-Organization, 8–9 June 1961 (New York: Pergamon Press, 1962), 266.

  6. W. Ross Ashby, “Connectance of Large Dynamic (Cybernetic) Systems: Critical Values for Stability,” Nature 228 (21 November 1970): 784.

  7. W. Ross Ashby, “Principles of the Self-Organizing Dynamic System,” Journal of General Psychology 37 (1947): 125.

  8. W. Ross Ashby, “The Physical Origin of Adaptation by Trial and Error,” Journal of General Psychology 32 (1945): 24.

  9. Ashby, “Trial and Error,” 13, 24.

  10. Ibid., 20.

  11. Ashby, “Principles of the Self-Organizing System,” 270, 273.

  12. Ibid., 270–271.

  13. Irving J. Good, Speculations on Perceptions and other Automata, IBM Research Lecture RC-115 (Yorktown Heights, NY: IBM, 1959), 17.

  14. Robert L. Chapman, John L. Kennedy, Allen Newell, and William Biel, “The System Research Laboratory’s Air Defense Experiments,” Management Science 5, no. 3 (April 1959): 260.

  15. Ibid., 252.

  16. Ibid., 267.

  17. John von Neumann, “The Impact of Recent Developments in Science on the Economy and on Economics,” speech to the National Planning Association, Washington, D.C., 12 December 1955; reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 6 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1963), 100.

  18. Robert Crago, in “A Perspective on SAGE: Discussion,” Annals of the History of Computing 5, no. 4 (October 1983): 386.

  19. Beatrice K. Rome and Sydney C. Rome, Leviathan: A Simulation of Behavioral Systems, to Operate Dynamically on a Digital Computer, System Development Corporation report no. SP-50, 6 November 1959, 7.

  20. Ibid., 11.

  21. Beatrice K. Rome and Sydney C. Rome, The Leviathan Technological System for the PHILCO 2000 Computer, System Development Corporation Technical Memorandum TM-713, 11 April 1962, 8.

  22. Rome and Rome, Leviathan: A Simulation of Behavioral Systems, 15.

  23. Ibid., 24.

  24. Ibid., 42.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid., 48.

  27. Beatrice K. Rome and Sydney C. Rome, “Leviathan, and Information Handling in Large Organizations,” in Allen Kent and Orrin Taulbee, eds., Electronic Information Handling (Washington, D.C.: Spartan Books, 1965), 172–173.

  28. Beatrice K. Rome and Sydney C. Rome, Organizational Growth Through Decisionmaking (New York: American Elsevier, 1971), 1.

  29. Oliver G. Selfridge, “Pandemonium: A Paradigm for Learning,” National Physical Laboratory Symposium No. 10 on the Mechanisation of Thought Processes, vol. 1, proceedings of a symposium held at the National Physical Laboratory, 24–27 November 1958 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1959), 516.

  30. Ibid., 523.

  31. Oliver Selfridge, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Software Technology,” abstract of lecture sponsored by Barr Systems, Inc., and the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of florida, Gainesville, 23 October 1995.

  32. Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, 5 September 1857, in The Journal and Proceedings of the Linnean Society 3, no. 9 (1858): 51.

  33. Samuel Butler, Luck, or Cunning, as the main means of Organic Modification? (London: Trübner & Co., 1887); reprinted as vol. 8 of The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler (London: Jonathan Cape, 1924), 234.

  34. Ibid., 235.

  35. Nils Barricelli, “The Intelligence Mechanisms behind Biological Evolution,” Scientia 95 (September 1963): 178–179.

  36. Butler, Luck, or Cunning?, 60.

  37. Samuel Butler, Unconscious Memory (London: David Bogue, 1880); reprinted as vol. 6 of The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler (London: Jonathan Cape, 1924), 16.

  38. William Paley, 1802, Natural Theology, vol. 2, reprinted, with illustrative notes, etc., in four volumes (London: Charles Knight, 1845), 9.

  39. John von Neumann, in Arthur Burks, ed., Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966), 47.

  40. John Myhill, “The Abstract Theory of Self-Reproduction,” in Mihajlo D. Mesarovic, ed., Views on General Systems Theory, Proceedings of the Second Systems Symposium at Case Institute of Technology, 1964; reprinted in Arthur Burks, ed., Essays on Cellular Automata (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 218.

  41. John von Neumann, 1948, “The General and Logical Theory of Automata,” in Lloyd A. Jeffress, ed., Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior: The Hixon Symposium (New York: Hafner, 1951), 31.

  42. Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (London: John Churchill, 1844), 222–223
.

  43. Nils Barricelli, in Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, eds., Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, A Symposium Held at the Wistar Institute, April 25–26, 1966 (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute, 1967), 67.

  44. Lewis Thomas, “The Lives of a Cell,” New England Journal of Medicine 284, no. 19 (13 May 1971): 1083.

  45. Lewis Thomas, “On Societies as Organisms,” New England Journal of Medicine 285, no. 29 (8 July 1971): 101.

  46. Ibid., 102.

  47. Lewis Thomas, “Computers,” New England Journal of Medicine 288, no. 24 (14 June 1973): 1289.

  48. Lewis Thomas, “On Artificial Intelligence,” New England Journal of Medicine, 28 February 1980: 506.

  49. Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (New York: Viking, 1983), 17.

  50. Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: John Murray, 1868; 2d ed., New York: Appleton, 1896), 2:399 (page citation is to 2d edition).

  51. Philip Morrison, “Entropy, Life, and Communication,” in Cyril Ponnamperuma and A. G. W. Cameron, eds., Interstellar Communication: Scientific Perspectives (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 182.

  CHAPTER 11

  1. Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (London: Methuen, 1930); reprinted, from the U.S. edition of 1931, in Last and First Men & Star Maker (New York: Dover Publications, 1968), 117.

  2. Olaf Stapledon to Agnes Miller, 22 December 1917, in Robert Crossley, ed., Talking Across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913–1919 (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1987), 262–263.

  3. Olaf Stapledon, “Experiences in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit,” in Julian Bell, ed., We Did Not Fight 1914–1918: Experiences of War Resisters (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1935), 369.

  4. Ibid., 360.

  5. Olaf Stapledon to Agnes Miller, 28 February 1915, in Crossley, Talking Across the World, 75.

  6. Meaburn Tatham and James E. Miles, eds., The Friends’ Ambulance Unit 1914–1919: A Record (London: Swarthmore Press, 1920), 212.