Scientist, Historian, Author & Coder of Artificial Life. Board Member @alifeofficial / Independent Researcher 🌈 Web: https://nitter.cf/t.co/PVgvfDBM0Q Book: https://nitter.cf/t.co/yglFIqrzr4
Edinburgh, Scotland
Joined March 2013
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After over a year’s work, I’m delighted to see these editions published today. Grove imagined a self-preserving locomotive in 1888, then self-reproducing, evolving machines in 1890.
Both include forewords placing them in the history of Artificial Life.
enchantedbit.com/books/
ALT New Enchanted Bit editions of W. Grove’s A Mexican Mystery and The Wreck of a World, with complementary illustrated covers featuring autonomous steam locomotives.
Super happy to announce that our translation & commentary on Nils Barricelli's groundbreaking 1954 paper on artificial life & computational evolution are now published with free access! tim-taylor.com/news/posts/2... What's with the picture of the door? See my comment to this post!
ALT Photograph of the front entrance to Corso Vittorio Emanuele 37, Milan. The door is in an art deco style with glass panels and a mixture of straight and curved metal elements. The door is located inside a mall, surrounded by light brown tiled walls and floor. There are adverts for Diesel clothing on either side of the door, both bearing the tagline "For successful living".
I happened to be in Milan briefly last week. The picture shows the front entrance to Corso Vittorio Emanuele 37, which, in ~1950 was home to publishing house La Fiaccola, who published the Methodos journal! It's likely that Barricelli's paper was published behind this very door!
What I find remarkable about The Wreck of a World is its progression from autonomous machines to self-reproduction and evolutionary change. More than 130 years later, these remain central questions in Artificial Life.
The new edition is published on Saturday.
Two days to go.
In W. Grove’s The Wreck of a World (1890), autonomous locomotives become capable of reproduction. Their descendants evolve across land and sea, bringing humanity to the brink of extinction.
New edition published 31 October.
enchantedbit.com/books/the-w…
ALT Cover of W. Grove’s The Wreck of a World, showing a line of autonomous locomotives and a machine-vessel, set against an image of the Earth that seems to be fractured and falling apart.
Tim Taylor retweeted
SAVE THE DATE: July 19–23, 2027!
#ALIFE2027 is coming to Prague, Czechia!
Join us as we celebrate 40 years of Artificial Life conferences, dating back to Los Alamos in 1987.
Stay tuned for updates.
👉 2027.alife.org
Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube @alifeconf
In 1888, W. Grove imagined a locomotive that could gather its own fuel and water, travel without a driver—and resist attempts to control it.
A Mexican Mystery returns in a new edition on 31 October.
tim-taylor.com/blog/posts/20…
Summerhall is home to over 100 artists and small tech companies in Edinburgh, myself included. Please consider signing this petition to stop developers bringing in the bulldozers and building yet more student accommodation and hotels.
you.38degrees.org.uk/petitio… via @38degrees
Author-formatted versions of our translation of Nils Barricelli's 1954 paper "Esempi Numerici di Processi di Evoluzione" & our commentary on it are now on my website! It was the first journal paper to describe computational experiments in artificial life. tim-taylor.com/news/posts/20…
In 2024 I found two little-known Victorian novels exploring questions central to Artificial Life: machine autonomy, reproduction and evolution. I’m now bringing them back into print through @EnchantedBit. Here’s the story:
tim-taylor.com/blog/posts/20…
Excited to reveal the cover art for our new editions of W. Grove's books A Mexican Mystery (1888) & The Wreck of a World (1890)! Paperback versions of both books will be published by 31 Oct, ebook versions soon afterwards. Stay tuned for further details! enchantedbit.com/books/
Tim Taylor retweeted
🚂📚 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:
enchantedbit.com
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 (he passed it!), and 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 on Barricelli's paper, its context, his other papers on symbiogenesis & evolution and the significance and legacy of the work today. Both have today been submitted to @ARTL_journal 👍🎉 [2/2]
It's taken way longer than originally anticipated (18 months), but I'm super excited to say that the project to translate Nils Aall Barricelli's groundbreaking 1954 paper on computational evolution/artificial life (Esempi Numerici di Processi di Evoluzione) is now complete! [1/2]
🤖 Made with AI
Wonderful to see @librarycongress'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/lo…
Two amazing opportunities to work in Helsinki in Christian Guckelsberger's wonderful group, and collaborate with equally amazing researchers in Japan and Australia! bsky.app/profile/creativeend…
Tim Taylor retweeted
📢 Submit your paper to #ALIFE2026 (Waterloo 🇨🇦 & online, 17–21 Aug 2026)!
📝 Full Papers & Summaries deadline: 30 March 2026
📌 Special Sessions, Workshops & Tutorials proposals: 20 Feb 2026
Theme: Living and Lifelike Complex Adaptive Systems
2026.alife.org
On @BBCr4today yesterday @j_amesmarriott 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/m002gf… (starts at 2:47:42).