PACE’s technology is based on the self-organization, evolution and
programmability of a particular novel artificial living system,
simple artificial cells and their chemical precursors. A priority
for PACE activity at the Centre is a strong connection between
experimental efforts, and theoretical and simulation efforts. We
envision this being a priority for the Centre as a whole ( in
contrast for instance with the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico) with
consistent efforts to bring these different components together.
This priority is motivated by the conviction that achieving goals of
designing, guiding, and controlling living technology requires a
strong interdisciplinary combination of these different efforts, and
that a complete understanding of living systems requires close
contact with an embodied realization.
Such a European Centre can also serve the strongly multi-disciplinary
initiatives in the thematically related EU-funded emerging technology
projects. There is the common theme of exploiting the organizational
and creative potential of complex life-like systems in technological
applications.
When synergies are identified, we propose to enlarge the focus of the
ECLT by including other embodiments of complex systems with life-like
properties, including inorganic systems such as robots, growing
evolving networks, or populations of embodied agents. While other
IST-FET projects are not focused entirely within living technology,
they do appear to have significant overlap with this theme and the
ECLT now forms a unique attraction in Europe and differs from other
complex system initiatives. The qualitative system features that
would make it appropriate for study as living technology include:
autonomy, robustness, sensitivity, adaptation, evolvability, ongoing
creativity, self-construction, self-repair, modular structuring,
integrated design, intrinsic semantics, and collective intelligence.
Examples of research themes that have provided focii for joint
meeting and research activities at the ECLT include: