Imitators of Life   Omni: “So then, aren’t you artificial life
guys playing God?” Chris Langton: “Well, yeah, in a way I have
to admit it.”  The dream of creating life is hard to resist. For
many years, artificial intelligence seemed a sure way to this
goal. Researchers at universities like MIT would regularly claim
that within ten years computers would surpass humans in
intelligence. But decades passed, and by the 1980’s researchers
widely conceded that these claims were a bit premature.  Then
came artificial life. In 1987 a young scientist named Chris
Langton, from Los Alamos National Laboratories, put together in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, the first conference on artificial life.
The essence of life, he said, is organization transforming by
rules, so we can study life effectively through computer
simulations. Conference speakers offered studies of computer-
simulated “organisms” and “ecosystems.” By the widely publicized
second conference, in 1990, this new field of scientific study
had lots of players.  Their i