Silicon Second Nature takes us on an expedition into an extraordinary world where nature is made of bits and bytes and life is born from sequences of zeroes and ones. Artificial Life is the brainchild of scientists who view self-replicating computer programssuch as computer virusesas new forms of life. Anthropologist Stefan Helmreich's look at the social and simulated worlds of Artificial Lifeprimarily at the Santa Fe Institute, a well-known center for studies in the sciences of complexityintroduces readers to the people and programs connected with this unusual hybrid of computer...