Magical A-Life Avatars
A new paradigm for the Internet
Peter Small

1998 | 450 pages
ISBN: 1884777589
$38.95 Softbound print book  

RESOURCES

DESCRIPTION

Here's a book guaranteed to inspire your creativity and get you looking at the Internet and the World Wide Web with new eyes. Modeling its vision on evolutionary biology, Magical A-Life Avatars uses the example environment of Macromedia Director to create:

Magical A-Life Avatars shows, with practical examples, how to bring intelligence to your Website and create Internet interfaces that will increase your competitive advantage. If you're interested in cutting-edge website design and application, this book is for you.

WHAT'S INSIDE

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THIS BOOK...

"For anyone interested in artificial life and who wants to help the internet evolve in new directions, this book is a must read, even if you have no experience using Director."
--Bill Burris, ATL & COM Notebook

"There are no other books out there like this! The message is totally original."
--Kevin Mulvihill, President, Sudden Insight

"This book is a must have for anyone interested in Director and the Web."
--Michael Greenberg, Multimedia Developer, AT&T-Interactive Products and Services

"WOW! What a marvelous book. Helps me use Director in unimagined ways."
--Jim Robanske, Northern NEF

ABOUT THE AUTHOR...

Peter Small is an electronic systems engineer and a specialist in object-oriented programming. He is the author of "Lingo Sorcery--the magic of list objects and intelligent agents" and the award-winning, cult CD-ROM, "How God Makes God."

WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING

"If you find yourself getting stuck in the same old rut when it comes to your thinking about the Net, you owe it to yourself and your customers to venture out into the unknown. Magical A-Life Avatars is mental food for developing minds... I hope more Web developers read it. It will be an interesting future for us all!"
          --Excerpt from Scott Clark's book review on WebDeveloper.com.

"Distinctive book explaining how to get intelligent software agents to work."
          --Clipcode.com

Source Code

The source code from Magical A-Life Avatars is available online.

Download the source code.

Chapter Summaries

(These are the summaries that appear at the ends of chapters in the book.)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 introduced you to the enigmatic concept of A-Life avatars. These are a form of artificial life that can be created within an information environment made within the RAM space of a computer. The whole of biological life can be described in terms of objects existing in an information environment and bound together within a communication infrastructure.

A-Life avatars are analogous to the life forms found in biological environments, but they have to rely upon a cell-like structure in the RAM space of a computer for their existence. This cell must be a stable application capable of creating the avatars in the RAM space controlled by the cell. The only application currently capable of providing such a suitable cell-like structure is the multimedia player used with Macromedia's multimedia authoring package Director. Normally controlled from the server-side, we have seen how these players can be controlled from the client side.

With the help of Lingo code, chapter 1 shows how the Director player can be hijacked into service as a client-controlled device. Under client control, the player can then be used as a cell to introduce the software objects necessary to manifest A-Life avatars.

Some convoluted programming has been necessary in this chapter in order to adequately demonstrate the underlying concepts. In practice, the programming you are likely to use will be far more straightforward than has been shown here. For instance, the experienced programmer will have noted that it would have been far easier to have created a new scriptText in the Input field member rather than go to all the trouble of creating a "dummy" cast member. However, the point being made is that Lingo programming can manipulate the basic formatting structure of a Director-made A-Life avatar cell analogous to the way biological messages affect the basic machinery of biological cells.

At this stage, don't worry about the efficiency of the coding or the programming techniques. It's enough that you understand that Lingo instructions can be sent into an A-Life cell to make changes that would seem dosed to all but the original designer using a full authoring environment.

As will be seen later, when more sophisticated portal documents are used, the programming can be much more conventional and will not have to rely on using back door techniques to manipulate the contents of an A-Life avatar cell.

Overall, the essential purpose of this chapter has been to demonstrate that A-Life avatars can be created from objects that are defined in text documents. These objects can be sent into the RAM space of a computer and arranged to enable communication among them. From here, we can build upon this concept, increasing the complexity of avatars and eventually creating sophisticated artificial life forms on the Internet. This holds out the exciting possibility that we can extend the capabilities of human existence and blur the dividing line between biological and artificial life.


Chapter 2

Chapter 2 began by explaining how an A-Life avatar cell can be given extended powers and capabilities through a system of plug-in modules called Xtras.

One such Xtra, the fileIO Xtra, allows avatars in the cell to be able to create and manipulate text documents in the system. Others allow avatars to import documents from the Internet. Together, they allow avatars to create systems of objects from documents brought in from a vast variety of different sources.

The example in this chapter showed how a simple text document could specify the construction of an avatar, triggering the cell to import all the necessary documents and construct a system of communicating objects in RAM.

The example was trivial, but if you expand upon this idea to visualize hundreds, perhaps thousands, of objects being brought into an A-Life avatar cell, you'll begin to see the complexity that can be created within the environment of an A-Life avatar cell.

To better understand the order of complexity that can be created within an A-Life avatar cell, imagine a series of text documents, specifying the locations of tens of thousands of object documents. This approaches the way in which nature gets DNA to specify the construction of a life form using a biological cell--but more on this later.


Chapter 3

The essence of chapter 3 is to show how an A-Life avatar cell can be extended to communicate with the Internet. This makes every page on the World Wide Web effectively a part of the avatar cell.

By employing the services of Net Xtras, objects can be arranged to read from and download text and documents. By means of these text and documents, objects and avatars can be created within an A-Life avatar cell. If a rogue object manages to slip into the RAM space of an A-Life avatar cell, it could seize control of the A-Life avatar cell. Such a power could harness all of the resources of the Web to create an incredibly destructive avatar. However, these same forces can be harnessed to assist in your particular area of activity.

Simply skimming this chapter will not be sufficient to understand the unlimited power that an A-Life avatar cell can deliver when it is connected to the Internet. You are urged, therefore, to experiment with the techniques described above. For the purposes of this book, the examples have been fairly mundane, but with just a little imagination you can modify them to suit your own purposes.

If you have Web space available to you, place documents there yourself. You can invent your own agent object to provide liaison and help within the sphere of your own business interests, or you can act out the role of a mysterious Web power, controlling rogue objects you install in your own A-Life avatar cell. If you do not have a cell or are unable to place objects onto the Web yourself, there are sites available for you to be able to download A-Life avatar cells and experiment with various Web pages (see references section at the end of the book).

Above all, what this chapter should have done for you is help you realize that by installing a simple avatar object into an A-Life avatar cell, you can provide a means for triggering a cascade of media and activity that can pour into an A-Life avatar cell from all parts of the local system and from the Internet. This can be implemented by no more than a single email being sent to anyone who has an A-Life avatar cell installed on their machine.


Chapter 4

The main objective of this chapter has been to explain that A-Life avatar cells are environments that can be placed into the RAM space of computers to provide a common meeting ground for people and computers to communicate and exchange ideas or information.

Because of the wide range of capabilities and the versatility of the environments provided by A-Life avatar cells, they can easily serve as adaptable interfaces and quickly be reconfigured to facilitate almost any conceivable interchange, whether it be human to human, machine to machine, or human to machine.

A comparison was made between A-Life avatar cells and the ubiquitous spreadsheet applications which are used to model a wide range of dynamic systems and processes. It was pointed out that the A-Life avatar cell might be used as a superior form of spreadsheet. Models could not only be constructed in a mathematical form, but could also be graphically illustrated using the full capabilities of multimedia presentation techniques.

The ability for A-Life avatar cells to be able to model objects within a client's environment, and even to model the client and the client environment itself, gives avatars the potential to assist with problems involving judgment and prediction. For example, by being able to model a company, avatars can be designed to be virtual representatives, able to sit on a customer's desktop and personally help customers solve problems.

Appropriate and judicious choice of Xtras can virtually eliminate all problems concerning viruses, rogues, and security. However, the far-reaching versatility of some avatar systems can leave them open to certain risks; this need not be a problem if the avatar system is created within a closed or restricted environment such as an Intranet. A dosed environment can be extended in the form of a virtual Intranet, but reasonable precautions must be taken to ensure that external links are confined to trusted and reliable sources.

The obvious advantage of linking to the Internet will bring about a great deal of pressure to produce sophisticated tools for dealing with the Internet and the World Wide Web. This was demonstrated with the example of the bots, which can be used for all kinds of imaginative purposes and in ways that have no precedent in any other media. This is an area in which the A-Life avatar cell is likely to come into its own.


Chapter 5

This chapter has provided a very brief run-through of the various Lingo expressions, commands, and functions that can be used by objects in an A-Life avatar cell. I hope it will have given you a glimpse of the scope and range of possibilities available to avatars.

In a conventional multimedia authoring environment, metaphors are created to assist with comprehension and ease of use. Director uses the metaphor of a theater, where actors and scenery are moved on and off a stage. Sophisticated windows are also supplied to assist with product development, organization, and story line. In Director, these windows are called east and score windows.

These metaphors and aids are designed for use in creating conventional multimedia productions; however, they do not adequately reflect the use of the package for avatar systems on the Internet. This means that we have to look beyond the level of the metaphors to see how a Director document (movie) organizes its data.

Beyond the metaphors, we find that Director actually consists of arrays, or lists, where list items are pointers to areas of RAM holding media, scripts, or other lists. In this way, we can see how the cast and score windows are representations of complex list structures.

The cast is seen as the database for holding all the scripts and media used in a movie document. The score is seen as a four-dimensional organization of the screen. Seen in this way, it's easy to relate the content of the Web to this system, because the Web can now be seen as another giant cast window where each page (URL) on a Web site is effectively another member that can be used in the avatar production.

Of course, the bringing of a Web page member into a production is not quite as simple as using a member placed into a cast position, but, using appropriate Lingo instructions, the whole process can be made transparent to a client user of an A-Life avatar cell. To the user, then, the entire World Wide Web is seen as an integral part of the A-Life avatar cell.

The chapter concluded by providing a simple abstraction of avatar technology by visualizing avatars as an intelligent space which can control containers to bring in new scripts and media to assist the avatar space in polymorphing into any form or function. These containers, in most practical applications of avatars, will likely be in the form of full multimedia documents (movies), enabling many media items to be transported together in a format the avatar space understands. These movie containers can be compressed in a dcr form and, perhaps, arrive with their own built-in helper objects which could assist in the installation of the container.


Chapter 6

This chapter started with the very real problem of the client-side approach to the Inter-net. Unlike the server side, the client side sees the Internet and the World Wide Web as a vast and complex entity that is far beyond anyone's hope of full comprehension.

By using the features incorporated in an A-Life avatar cell, it's possible to create an interface that simulates a cafe full of knowledgeable contacts that can help directly with any kind of informational need a client might have.

Although the chapter illustrates several examples of Lingo programming structures, the essence of this chapter is not the programming per se, but the unconventional approaches that can be brought to bear on the problem of information retrieval from the Internet. In particular, we reviewed the way in which the imagination can be used to create virtual objects and how information can be represented as shapes and colors.

The concept of bringing a whole group of knowledgeable people in from the Inter-net to sit around in a cafe on your computer screen, waiting to answer your questions, seems quite bizarre until you devise a strategy and isolate the necessary communication links. Then, with the aid of very simple, high-level programming structures, the whole concept becomes possible and viable.

It is this element of creative thinking that should have been gleaned from this chapter, rather than any superficial programming technicalities.


Chapter 7

In this chapter, we have departed from the conventional uses of A-Life avatar cells. Instead of designing multimedia products with a closed, server-side approach to creating applications and presentations, we set off to explore the unique possibilities open to us when we take a client-side approach to the cell, essentially viewing the A-Life avatar cell as an open system.

The reason for taking this route is that it allows us to consider design strategies that use the proven powerful techniques of evolving biological systems. Biological forms evolve to an increasing complexity through a bottom-up approach which, by continually adding new modules, builds up structures that are basically of an object-oriented design.

An essential requirement of this approach is that the A-Life avatar cell is maintained as an open system that is always under the control of the client. To facilitate this openness and client control, we went through the mechanics of creating menus using Lingo instructions.

Object-oriented designs and biological structures both involve the exchange of useful information. In the biological world, an important vector for information exchange is the virus. It was noted that there are strong similarities between the structures of biological forms and the formatting of Director documents. Because of this, we can employ a Director document to take on a role similar to that of a biological virus as a vehicle for functional information exchange. This was demonstrated with a Director document called a cast document.

It was demonstrated that for the cast document to be able to manipulate a cell like a virus, it had to use certain predefined protocols. These protocols were enabled by creating a castHelper object, which helps cast documents to transfer their information. The cast document installs its functional information and manipulates the functions of the cell by creating a trainer object that exists temporarily in the RAM space of the A-Life avatar cell.

As an example, the trainer object manipulated the avatar constructed as a cafÇe; interface from chapter 6. It gave the customer objects new abilities, which allowed them to draw pictures on the screen. These proved to be useful only if the customer objects cooperated in their abilities. The example is trivial, but the underlying concept has powerful possibilities.

By using objects in different combinations to perform different tasks, a new control dimension is added. This is similar to the versatility given to biological life forms that use different combinations of genes to such great effect. It was shown that the Lingo property list structure is an ideal mechanism for calling combinations of objects into cooperative action. They can be used to simulate the way the human brain can call up a combination of learned or instinctive responses to a given environmental prompt.


Chapter 8

In considering the technical detail of programming objects and message paths, it's easy to lose sight of the conceptual implications. Let's just summarize what we have covered so far in this book.

  1. We have looked at multimedia players in a new light. We have viewed them as independent applications quite separate from the documents that they play. To differentiate between the two paradigms, we have given the multimedia player a new name: A-Life avatar cell.

  2. Instead of the player playing documents, the player is seen as pulling scripts and media off of documents to create a composition of its own within an allotted space in RAM.

  3. Instead of using the metaphors normally associated with multimedia authoring packages, we have viewed RAM space and documents as being a multidimensional space made up from two-dimensional strings.

  4. All structures created within this two-dimensional world can be seen as arrays (or "lists," as they're called in Director). Suitable interconnections between these arrays can give the resultant structures a multidimensional form.

  5. Objects and media can be introduced into the multidimensional RAM space from various sources with the aid of a suitably-designed portal document.

  6. Cast documents and text messages can be used to enhance the capabilities of objects and avatars, as well as to introduce new media and intelligence.

  7. By grouping objects together, single virtual objects can be formed that appear to have ali the combined abilities and knowledge of their constituent members.

  8. Virtual objects can modify and alter their behaviors and responses by reconfiguring message paths according to response patterns stored as lists.

  9. It is easy to transmit and exchange learned experiences and appropriate responses as values in a property list, allowing objects to learn how to cope with particular situations.

  10. If the multimedia player--the A-Life avatar cell--is opened up to show its environment, the cell and the environment can be considered to be a single organism, with the cell and its environment being able to exchange information and media in order to create all kinds of avatar complexes.

  11. Using Lingo list structures, biological decision-making mechanisms can be simulated. These mechanisms can be supplied with information in the form of Lingo lists allowing information to be quickly processed for decision-making purposes.

  12. The integration of an A-Life avatar cell with its environment means that avatars can have access to structure, organization, and intelligence extending far beyond the limits of its allocated client RAM space. An avatar can encompass any of the resources in its local environment as well as the whole of the World Wide Web.

  13. By including humans in the system, as was demonstrated in the cafe model of chapter 6, an avatar can even incorporate the use of human intelligence within its overall organization.

Even with the very primitive and simple examples developed so far, these concepts of cells, objects, and message paths are beginning to show potential for creating systems that exhibit intriguing powers of discrimination, learning, and adaptability. In essence, an A-Life avatar cell can be likened to the conscious part of the human brain--especially when seen as the action center of its accessible local and external environments.

All of the above is difficult to imagine if a conventional, server-side view of multimedia and the World Wide Web is applied. For the avatar concepts to be realized, multimedia documents must not be seen as the essence of avatars--they are merely carriers of media. Web sites must not be seen as the focal points of interest or activity--they are merely containers (synapses) for simplifying the exchange of information.

The conventional way to view the World Wide Web is to think of a Web site as being a broadcasting device or a structure that people visit. It is nothing of the kind. A Web site is a collection of documents on a computer that a client downloads to its own machine (figures 8.23, 8.24, and 8.25).

Many people view the World Wide Web as a place where businesses display their products. They design sites for customers to browse through linked pages. A Web site is even seen by some as the place where business is done and transactions completed. These conceptions are true only in the minds of the server-side site owners.

Client-side orientation with A-Life avatar cells view things very differently. A customer is not seen as visiting a site; instead, the site is seen as visiting the customer. The site isn't regarded as an information source for the client to explore, but as a tool, a virtual application, the client downloads to use for personal use or business. Whatever happens, happens on a client's machine and in the client's domain; this includes all business transactions.


Chapter 9

Although this chapter has been filled with code, the main aim has been to build a conceptual model for a simple, yet sophisticated, control mechanism that can be created in an A-Life avatar cell. Based loosely upon the way biological systems have evolved emotions to influence behavior patterns, the control mechanism displays some of the characteristics of a human brain.

The control system is different from conventional logical control mechanisms in that the decision or result is not of the form "true" or "false", but of a less positive, more subtle kind of influence. This allows many different factors and influences to be combined, the extent of each influence being registered in a kind of voting system. The model developed here has many similarities to the techniques of applying fuzzy logic or neural networks: influencing factors are allocated a weighting to reflect their relative effect on the system as a whole.

Rising above the level of the code, we see that the external influences affecting the decisions of this brain (as well as those external sources that specify the options available) are in the form of lists. These lists are constructed as conventional text strings. It may be hard to see the significance of this until you realize that these vectors of communication are in a universal format; they can be generated by any text processor or application that can deliver a text string. This allows the options and factors influencing an avatar's decision to come from a variety of sources that may have no knowledge of programming constructs or even of A-Life avatar cells. The sources need only to be aware of the names and the order of the options.

This can be compared to the messaging and control systems present in biology. The vectors of communication in biological systems are protein molecules, which are specified by strings of nucleotides on the chromosomes. Different alphabet, different language, but, in essence, exactly the same principle.

At this juncture, it's important to recognize this generic brain of the Joe object as a focal point of a potentially vast system of sources of influence and control. This conceptual view can be seen in figure 9.22, where Joe's brain is seen as the center of many sources of external control and influence.

This system can be viewed in several ways:

  1. All the external sources can be considered to be acting to influence the decision being made by Joe's brain. This view sees Joe's brain acting like a helpless piece of driftwood at the mercy of competing forces. The result of this viewpoint sees Joe's brain making a decision based upon consensus.

  2. Joe's brain can be seen as taking part in the process and actively choosing and selecting sources of input. In this view, Joe's brain can decide it doesn't like the decision the inputs result in and change the options or the sources of influence to get a more appropriate result. In other words, the results can act as feedback to readjust the line of reasoning.

  3. Joe's brain can be viewed as an extension of a human client user's own brain. Its activity and decision making is directed and purposed by the human client. In this application, there is a strong, interactive liaison between the avatar and the client.

  4. Joe's brain can be seen as the property of a visiting avatar: an agent sent from the server side of the Web. It can act to inform, persuade, or influence a human client. Controlled from the server side, Joe's brain can act to assist the server side in dealing with the human.

  5. Joe's brain can be used as an instrument of control by an autonomous system of documents. As we saw in chapter 3, documents can easily usurp control from a client. By installing their own brain into an A-Life avatar cell, they could tap into a source of intelligence that spans the whole of the World Wide Web.

  6. There is the potential for using several of these brains in unison. It is easily arranged for a single A-Life avatar cell to have more than one brain. These brains can then communicate with each other and cooperate, perhaps greatly extending their power when working together. Taking this a stage further, brains can be installed in a variety of different avatar cells in different computers across the World Wide Web. These avatars could then communicate and cooperate via the Internet with and without the help of human intervention.

  7. There is the unique ability of an avatar brain to lie dormant on the Web. In substance, a brain, even complete with options and conditioning, can be stored in a text format on pages of a Web site (or perhaps spread over a number of sites). As we saw in chapter 3, a simple call to the Web can trigger a cascade of activity to bring the dormant brain to life in any A-Life avatar cell.

Remember, it's not the code that's important in this chapter, or even the procedures detailed here. What is important is the concept of an intelligence that can exist as a flexible component of an avatar system whose operation is arranged totally by means of ordinary strings of text.

The chapter ended with a warning that we still have a way to go before we catch up with the sophistication of nature. Nature's structures include additional mechanisms with chaotic characteristics. These provide simple nonlinear ways to turn complex data into fast-acting responses without resorting to exhaustive and time-consuming information processing.


Chapter 10

The essence of this chapter has been to explore the possibility of using a mathematician's abstract modeling environment as an exotic approach to designing avatars.

Hilbert space, an abstract multidimensional modeling environment, can model any function or system of functions. Dimensions, in this context, are synonymous with function parameters. The results of functions, complex functions, and systems depend upon the value of their parameters, so results can be identified with particular points in the Hilbert space that's modeling them.

It's not necessary to know the working details of any of the functions, systems, or environments being modeled. Hilbert space simply provides an identification between points in its multidimensional space and observed results. This allows optimum parameter values to be teased out simply by observing function results generated with a genetic algorithm.

By creating groups of test results based around the best results from previous tests, parameter values can be constantly adjusted in a random manner until they approach optimum values.

Evolution uses a genetic algorithm in a feedback loop to choose the genetic makeup of individuals creating the next generation. This provides an autonomous system that will self-adapt to its environment. Representing emotions as parameters can provide "fuzzy" logic control systems and self-regulating mechanisms.

The way in which Lingo and the Director environments are structured allows Hil-bert space to be simulated in the environment of an A-Life avatar cell. This environment can be extended to include the local system, CD-ROMs, and the World Wide Web. Web addresses can be used as dimensions in this simulation of Hilbert space to create all kinds of complex systems.

Hilbert space can be used to model any kind of complexity because it isn't necessary to know the exact details of the systems being modeled. This allows Hilbert space to model (or at least emulate) systems as complex as the human brain and as abstract as that of "mind."

Although it's not possible to deduce the actual structures of systems being modeled in Hilbert space, it's possible to create working systems based upon any system modeled in Hilbert space by using the multidimensional list structures found in many programming languages. The environment of an A-Life avatar cell and the structure of the programming language Lingo are ideal for emulating Hilbert space, so it's theoretically possible to construct in an A-Life avatar cell any system which can be modeled in Hil-bert space.

Another feature of Hilbert space is that it can model not only single objects, but groups of objects as well. For example, the space could be filled with the detailed specification for every person in the world. At some particular configuration of the dimensions, there would form the most ideal fifty people to be your Internet contacts in the library cafe interface discussed in chapter 6. At some other place in Hilbert space would be an ideal friend, who you could meet through partying with bot clones. A point in Hilbert space could specie/an ideal working environment, a perfect team, or a perfect job. In theory, at least, by using an appropriate sampling technique based upon genetic algorithms, these elusive combinations could be teased out of Hilbert space.

Thinking processes and communication techniques can be modeled in Hilbert space, which suggests that such systems can be designed into avatars, allowing them to think, communicate, and transfer thoughts.

The idea of moving around in Hilbert space can emulate a thinking process. As avatars can create systems modeled in Hilbert space using the multidimensional characteristics of Lingo lists, they should be able to enact a form of"thinking."

Hilbert space can produce results from nonlinear functions. The genetic algorithm technique exposes these nonlinearities, which allows populations of functions to be generated which can cope with conflicting results emanating from nonlinear rules in an environment.

Using the concept of Hilbert space will allow avatars to be designed that learn and adapt to constandy-changing environments. It could also bring about surprises, such as an emerging intelligence that could live on the Web, turning the Web into a brainlike system that could be accessed by any computer with an A-Life avatar cell.

The concept could emulate human reasoning and decision making, as well as provide valuable insights into the enigmatic nature of the human brain and mind.

Note

Chaos, chaotic systems, and islands of stability have been mentioned in this chapter. These are the mathematical effects emerging from the itineration of mathematical functions which include a self-referral term, for example, x - a + (x-l). They are ubiquitous in biological systems where a change to the environment made in one generation affects the next generation. Small changes in the constants of these functions can lead to bizarre results which can result in small changes causing the system to become completely unstable or resulting in the system stabilizing across a wide range of parameter values. Sometimes stabilizing effects occur at different values for different parameter ranges. These are known as "islands of stability" and can allow a system to be switched among several different stable states.

In Hilbert space, this effect can occur when the result of a function is also a dimension in the Hilbert space of that function. This is similar to the effects you get from positive and negative feedback in a hi-fi system. Although important in the context of dynamic systems, chaos and chaotic systems are outside the scope of this book. See the references section for more information in this area.


Chapter 11

Essentially, this final chapter is about merging the biological world with the silicon world. Seen in terms of an information environment, there is very little difference between the life forms created with biological cells and the avatars created with A-Life avatar cells.

In terms of information theory, both biological life forms and avatars are brought to life through information that is ultimately based upon binary transfers. Seen from the point of view of an abstract modeling environment, they appear very similar.

The phenomenon of biology can be described in terms of the rundown of energy. In this view, all routes to dispersion can be seen as competing with each other for the energy to be dispersed. Winners will be those routes that use their allotted energy to improve their competitiveness in this game to disperse energy.

Examining this process in terms of games theory allows us to isolate the determinants of success. These turn out to be the ability to remember events from the past and to use this information in a heuristic strategy. A successful strategy necessitates having facilities for information storage and processing for the purpose of prediction. Cooperation is also seen as an important ingredient for success, and this requires effective means of communication. These features and characteristics necessary for successful competition have evolved in humans.

Abstracting away from the hardware and observing life on earth in a nonsubjective way, an alien life form might see computers as an integral and inseparable part of the biology of our planet. An alien would view the Internet and the World Wide Web as an extension of the evolutionary direction of humans. This is the key to understanding and exploiting the Internet.

It's hard to see the parallels between biological life and avatars until you look at the way biological life comes into existence through a system of symbiotic relationships. Based upon cells and messaging between cells, biological forms have evolved which work together to create cooperative units which can compete successfully in the biological environment.

To understand how this biological symbiosis carries through to the World Wide Web, it's necessary to dissolve the distinction of a cell and think in terms of virtual objects. The biological cell is a component of a biological life form in a way similar to the way in which a software object becomes part of an avatar. Both biological life forms and avatars are, thus, viewed as virtual objects that can evolve to similar levels of complexity.

Seeing avatars and human life forms as part of a single continuum that is evolving onto the information landscape of the Internet, it becomes pertinent to ask where the energy for this evolution is going to come from. This leads right back to the evolutionary force, the drive for competition.

This works as a positive feedback loop that favors systems using energy to increase their competitive advantage. In terms of human endeavor, energy is synonymous with money; therefore, competition for energy is realized in the form of competition for financial profit. Profit will arise from using the Web to make things easier for users. This means using the system to bring together cooperating units in progressively complex symbiotic arrangements.

The essence of the avatar system is illustrated with a brief example that describes how the static content of a CD-ROM can be merged with the dynamic environment of the Web to provide ongoing live tutorship to all students.

In conclusion, the evolution of Internet tools will be driven by man's instinctive need to compete for survival advantage. It is proposed here that A-Life avatar technology will provide a superior conceptual framework in which to view and participate in this process.