John Rieffel
 
 

John Rieffel

DEMO Lab, Brandeis University



It must be manifest that if this were true, the population
of the world would be at a standstill...I would suggest that in
the next edition of your poem you have it read -
'Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 1/16 is born.'...
The actual figure is so long I cannot get it onto a line, but I
believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage in a letter to Tennyson about his poem "Emily",
which ends with the lines: "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born"
(Thanks to "The Code Book", by Simon Singh)

"The Biological Isn't Logical"

Design tends to follow the leading technical products of
its period; in an age of aviation, even pencil-sharpeners
are streamlined. Given this longstanding trend, the
coming bio-genetic technical revolution should produce a
biomorphic epoch in 21st century design. But the living
world was not designed by a teleological, rationalist,
reductionist process. The living world grew irrationally
through non-systematic, genetic exploration of niche
possibilities, pruned back by natural selection and
occasional massive disasters. So if you're building
distributed networks, learn from crabgrass.

From The Viridian Design Principles 1.0



I am a PhD. Student in Jordan Pollack's DEMO Lab. My research interests include (but aren't limited to) Co-Evolutionary Learning, Evolution of Robot Morphologies and Brains, Ontogeny and Embryology as Paradigms for Automated Design and Assembly, and Artificial Chemistries.
Recent Work:

Some work on Embryogenic Scaffolding.

Publications


My Courses:
Spring 2002, Spring 2003, Spring 2004: Head Teaching Assistant for CoSi 21B Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

My Resume