Advances in Artificial Life 7th European Conference, ECAL 2003, Dortmund, Germany, September 14-17, 2003, Proceedings

Arti'cialLifehascomealongway. Sincetheinceptionofthe'eldabout16years ago with a seminal workshop at the Santa Fe Institute, the ?eld has developed quickly. Itsinterdisciplinaryrootshavebeenbothablessingandacurse. Critical people would say that nothing was new in the ideas of Arti'cial Life, since many other disciplines had addressed the very same questions, though probably under di'erent names. Other critics would state that the di'culty of interacting in an interdisciplinary way with colleagues from so many other and divergent ?elds would be so great that true progress could not come from such an enterprise, as those involved would be too busy understanding - or misunderstanding - each other. Admirers, on the other hand, would speak of a bold new attack on the most fascinating questions of science with this new approach. Others would say that new perspectives were opened by the questions the area of Arti'cial Life askedsopointedly. Forthoseinvolvedinthise'ortoversomeyears, ithasalways been very interesting and fascinating to work on these questions. From our discussions it also seems that Arti'cial Life is beginning to become mainstream. Evolutionarybiology, computationalandsystemsbiology, andc- putational social science, to name a few, are disciplines bene'tting from ideas hedgedinArti'cialLife. This, plusthesuccessofopen-endedevolutionarygames in the entertainment industry, the sensibility achieved with decades of work - hind us in arti'cial evolutionary approaches with ?xed ?tness measures, and the development of technology towards a networked, asynchronous, world of inter- tingentities, haveallconspiredtopreparethe'oorforAliferesearchcominginto its own. Notably the concept of emergence of new qualities from the interaction of entities without this quality has been a huge success in recent years.