Mark Bernstein is conducting an Artificial Life experiment to learn more about how blogging works: I'm hoping to learn about weblogs from an alife simulator I'm building. In the simulated world, we have 600 little artificial writers (I call them weblets) with 600 artificial weblogs. If traffic is the currency of the Web, each of the weblets wants to get rich. Some have big blogrolls (so lots of people will think well of them). Some have lots of daily links (so they can reward their friends quickly). Some hoard traffic, some spread it around. We'll see who wins. I find this fascinating, and can't wait to read what Mark finds out. Ever since I read The Rise of Endymion I've been interested in A-Life, as well as vaguely worried about where it may lead. Some of the most impressive A-Life experiments have evolved artificial life forms that specialize in hyper-parasitism, and these have often turned out to be the most efficient and evolved life forms in the system. I wonder if Mark will find some sort of parasitism or hyper-parasitism emerge in his "weblets?" Some forms of blogging, after all, could be viewed as a parasitic..."

Doug had me scratching my head for a moment on the A-life thing, then I did a Google search which clued me in - A as in artificial.  I got it now.  Good stuff.  Lot's to play with...

  8:29:36 PM