The Natural History of Artificial Life

This chapter centers on depictions of artificial life and death in contemporary society. One extended example is a nonfiction bestseller that is in effect a popularization of systems thinking–-Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: Thinking Without Thinking—with war game scenarios its focus Another is Kazuo Ishiguro’s recent novel about artful forms of life and death, secluded education, and ecologies of ignorance, in the systems epoch: Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro’s fiction is about art in the systems epoch in being about artificial life in the autonomy-enclaves of that epoch.