
Dimensions can be assigned to these organisms for each degree of freedom. A light switch, a battery, and light is an organism with a "point" degree of freedom: it is either on, or off, and therefore exists in a point space. An oven occupies a point in one-dimensional space (it's freedom is confined to a linear temperature). A pendulum occupies a point in two dimensional space, and bicycle, DeLanda notes, has about 10 degrees of freedom. In other words, there are only 10 aspects of a bicycle that separates it from a static object. It therefore exists in 10 dimensional "phase space," depicting this phase space would require collapsing 10 dimensional to a space we can view. I like the terms Non-Organic Life and Mechanical Phylum, since as we clearly dont require organic life to have even the slightest consciousness, non-organic life should not have to start with AI.

Another interesting dimension (no pun intended) of bots is that they can be thought to exist in multiple "universes." If you create a bot, Q, to roam through a set of data, you can duplicate not only Q but the space it lives in. You Therefore when charting Q's location you must not only specify its position according to these degrees of freedom, but you must specify which Q in which universe you are describing. DeLanda neglected this in his essay but I would consider it a part of phase space.
So if we can think of bots as part of a phylum, is there an architecture to their space? Does architecture apply only to humans? Is there an architecture to the space bacteria or worms live in?

DeLanda's essay also brings up an interesting note about order arising with no guided influence. Rocks are organized into similar stratum though nothing more than the chaos of our universe. Similarly, the planets of our universe formed in the same way. If the planet we stand on and the environment we live in creates order out of nothing, why is it so hard to imagine that it eventually created rudimentary life, or rather, rudimentary life created itself.
Thu, Jan 3, 2008 Permanent link
Categories: bots, ai, technology, Virtual Reality, Architecture, computers
Categories: bots, ai, technology, Virtual Reality, Architecture, computers
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