Cybolution Digital Life Platform

Cybolution is a digital life platform based on Whiteheadian process metaphysics. It utilizes notions from the avida digital life platform and from John H. Conway's Game of Life. The platform can also be viewed as an implementation of Whiteheadian process and to serve as an experimental platform for that metaphysics.

To run the platform, you will need the Java 5.0 Update 4 or higher Runtime Environment installed on your computer. You can acquire the most update to date version free at http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp.

Once you have installed the JRE, you can install Cybolution. Cybolution has been tested on Windows XP and Linux. Either, download cybolutionV2.zip and extract all of the contents. Or download cybolutionV2.jar. Then on a windows PC, bring up the DOS window, or on a linux PC, bring up a terminal and type:
jar xf cybolutionV2.jar

Either of these will install Cybolution in a directory called Cybolution Platform in the current directory. You are ready to go!

To start Cybolution on a Windows PC, bring up the DOS window and go to the Cybolution Platform directory and type:
cybolexw

To start Cybolution on a linux PC, bring up a terminal and go to the Cybolution Platform directory and type:
cybolexx

The Welcome panel will come up. Tab to the help panel and follow the directions

Version 2 upgrades

  1. In the CPU, when a label is not found, the label length is consistently set to zero.
  2. In the CPU, before looping through the genome, an updated phenome.perish() is executed to reset the chromosome in the phenome.
  3. In the phenome, the maximum fitness is reset to zero at the start of each generation, i.e., the maximum fitness is established by generation; whereas the global fitness is across generations.
  4. Upgrade phenome to supported weighted fitness.
  5. The reaper was upgraded to support a local maximum.
  6. The user manual was updated to indicated that negative fitness points are allowed.
  7. The user manual was updated to describe the method to recreate a run.

Errata for User Manual

  1. The pre-defined design files are supplied in the designbank subdirectory.
  2. In Linux, to use cybolexx as specified above, first do the following:
    cp cybolexx.bat cybolexx
    chmod 755 cybolexx

Anticipated Version 3 Upgrades

  1. Improved and upgraded merit/fitness processing, including bonus merit and true fitness.
  2. Option to utilize the digital soil resulting from dead entities as a fitness resource in the reaper.
  3. Improved GUI
  4. DNA differencing between two consecutive generations or between Eve and a current entity
  5. Sophisticated analysis of generations to discover attributes of self-organization, diversity, and complexity
  6. Movie frames of each generation for presentation

©2007 John A. Mills