Bruce Damer's presentation of the EvoGrid initiative at the SMARTLab in October of 2008

1. The EvoGrid Origins of Life Question Vision How Consequences Simulating an Origin of Life Event

2. Origins of Life: Archaean to Cambrian Digital Burgess 1997, A quest for life’s algorithmic origins in the “Cambrian Explosion”, Biota.org

3. Early exemplar: Karl Sims’ Evolving Virtual Creatures (1991-4) Artificial Life: Concept begins in the 1940s, field named in the 1980s, progress through the 1990s, 2000s

4. Karl Sims’ Evolving Virtual Creatures

5. The Question Can Artificial Life arise spontaneously from Artificial Non-Life and does this shed light on the Origins of Life from Non-Life & etc. etc.

6. The Vision: EvoGrid The Movie A Thought Experiment - Storyboards

9. EvoGrid The Movie A Thought Experiment – Rough Cut 3

11. The How: Implementation

12. The How: Implementation

13. The Consequences Will biologists (one day) declare these synthetic biological environments “worthy of study as a living system”? Would an EvoGrid and harnessing the power of evolution become a tool for Humanity in the 21 st Century? Would it become a mechanism for life’s expanded presence into the Solar System or for the survival and extension of life on Earth? How does a successful origin of life simulation affect our sense of God, our presence in the Universe and the future of life?

14. New Book: Divine Action and Natural Selection Damer Chapter: The God Detector, Gordon Chapter: Hoyle’s Tornado and the Origin of Artificial Life Seckbach, Gordon, World Scientific (2008) Upcoming book (launch October 27 th , 2008)

15. Closing Thought (Only at the very beginning of this thinking)

16. Resources and Acknowledgements Project EvoGrid at: http:// www.evogrid.org Project Biota & Podcast at: http:// www.biota.org DigitalSpace 3D simulations and all (open) source code at: http://www.digitalspace.com We would also like to thank NASA and many others for funding support for this work. Other acknowledgements for this presentation include: Dr. Richard Gordon at the University of Manitoba, the team at DM3D Studios, Peter Newman, Ryan Norkus, Exploring Life’s Origins Project, Scientific American Frontiers, and S. Gross.