User:William R. Buckley

My earliest work in self-replicating systems began with Apple-II computers. Together with James R. Hauser (then a physics professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), I developed the Apple Worm, and assisted with the development of Type Attack. The Apple Worm work is published in several forums, to include Scientific American, March, 1985, Call_A.P.P.L.E. Magazine, November, 1986, and in Japan, ASCII Magazine, 13(3) 265-271. The Scientific American publication here mentioned, showing a relation between my work on self-replicating programs and the work of A. K. Dewdney, called Core War. In 1987, I became the second director of the International Core Wars Society, a position I held until late 1992.

Since that time, I have completed a design for a self-replicator that is strictly in keeping with the specifications of von Neumann (29 states). The only competitive work comes from Nobili and Pesavento, with their work either relying upon a modification to the rule set of von Neumann (their 32state design), or failing to satisfy all requirements for machine self-replication (their 29-state design). I have since this time developed a computational model of machine ontogeny, so as to satisfy the laments of the late evolutionary biologist John Maynard-Smith. I have also founded the California Evolution Institute to foster this work.

I have been enjoying a collaborative effort with Adam P. Goucher, and our effort has been to demonstrate self-replication for the partial constructor. Adam has nearly prepared a tape suitable for demonstration of an addition to the configuration of the partial constructor; it has just one minor error in structure. The partial constructor has also been forwarded for review by the journal Artificial Life, as well as two prominent researchers into machine self-replication: Carlos Gershenson and Melanie Mitchell. This project has been fourteen years in the making; demonstration of machine self-replication by the means of partial construction is in the offing.

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