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One of the things that D. H. Lawrence disliked about machines was what he termed their iron insentience.
But such a charge becomes increasingly irrelevant in an age of artificially intelligent cyborgs, silicone sex dolls, and newly created xenobots - i.e., living machines, built by researchers in the United States, using stem cells obtained from African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis).
Beings that, whilst not spawned in the usual manner, are nevertheless organisms composed of biological tissue and not the inanimate and imbecile devices that Lawrence knew, assembled in factories from metal and plastic and held together with nuts and bolts.
Not only are they capable of independent movement, but, when damaged, xenobots can heal their own wounds. Once they have completed their task and the energy in their cells runs out, they die and decay just like other biodegradable objects (including ourselves). Their unique properties suggest xenobots may, in the future, have numerous applications in medicine and in helping safeguard the environment.
The xenobots, which are currently less than a millimetre long, are designed by an evolutionary algorithm on a supercomputer. The program generates random three dimensional forms and then tests each design in a virtual environment. The best are then used to create further designs, so that in this way the xenobots might be said to evolve.
The scientists involved patiently waited for the 100th generation before then selecting a handful of designs to produce in the lab, using tweezers and other tiny tools to sculpt early-stage skin and cardiac cells harvested from frog embryos. The resulting xenobots were placed in dishes of water to keep them alive and where they could be observed gaily swimming about.
The plan is to eventually not only make them bigger, but more complex; to build xenobots with blood vessels and sensory cells, for example, using mammalian tissue so that they can survive on dry land. Of course, once you create new organisms who can experience pain and possess rudimentary cogntive ability (i.e., have nervous systems and tiny brains), then there are obviously ethical issues to be addressed.
Indeed, there are doubtless people reading this now who will be worrying - perhaps not unreasonably - about rapid and profound advances in bio-technology. But that's a discussion for another day. For now, it's just fascinating to consider the implications of man inventing machines that now generate new life forms, throwing the binary oppositions that are usually invoked by vitalists like Lawrence into confusion and disarray.
But such a charge becomes increasingly irrelevant in an age of artificially intelligent cyborgs, silicone sex dolls, and newly created xenobots - i.e., living machines, built by researchers in the United States, using stem cells obtained from African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis).
Beings that, whilst not spawned in the usual manner, are nevertheless organisms composed of biological tissue and not the inanimate and imbecile devices that Lawrence knew, assembled in factories from metal and plastic and held together with nuts and bolts.
Not only are they capable of independent movement, but, when damaged, xenobots can heal their own wounds. Once they have completed their task and the energy in their cells runs out, they die and decay just like other biodegradable objects (including ourselves). Their unique properties suggest xenobots may, in the future, have numerous applications in medicine and in helping safeguard the environment.
The xenobots, which are currently less than a millimetre long, are designed by an evolutionary algorithm on a supercomputer. The program generates random three dimensional forms and then tests each design in a virtual environment. The best are then used to create further designs, so that in this way the xenobots might be said to evolve.
The scientists involved patiently waited for the 100th generation before then selecting a handful of designs to produce in the lab, using tweezers and other tiny tools to sculpt early-stage skin and cardiac cells harvested from frog embryos. The resulting xenobots were placed in dishes of water to keep them alive and where they could be observed gaily swimming about.
The plan is to eventually not only make them bigger, but more complex; to build xenobots with blood vessels and sensory cells, for example, using mammalian tissue so that they can survive on dry land. Of course, once you create new organisms who can experience pain and possess rudimentary cogntive ability (i.e., have nervous systems and tiny brains), then there are obviously ethical issues to be addressed.
Indeed, there are doubtless people reading this now who will be worrying - perhaps not unreasonably - about rapid and profound advances in bio-technology. But that's a discussion for another day. For now, it's just fascinating to consider the implications of man inventing machines that now generate new life forms, throwing the binary oppositions that are usually invoked by vitalists like Lawrence into confusion and disarray.
See: Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin, and Josh Bongard, 'A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (Jan 2020): click here.
Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for bringing this research to my attention.
Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for bringing this research to my attention.
