"Simulated Society May Generate Virtual Culture"

This idea sounds awfully familiar...It is like an upgrade to the Sims, minus the fun factor. It is interesting and crazy at the same time that we are now observing virtual people, as if there aren't enough real people around to observe. Are we headed toward extinction? Perhaps they should hire Jane Goodall for this project...

Researchers participating in the New and Emergent World Models Through Individual, Evolutionary and Social Learning (NEW-TIES) project are developing a society of virtual characters that can eat, reproduce, communicate, and learn through interaction. The scientists hope the virtual people's communications ability will spawn sophisticated cultural activities similar to those found in human societies. The project will place about 1,000 "agents" in a simulated environment hosted on a computer network distributed across two U.K. universities, two Dutch universities, and one Hungarian university. Each agent will be programmed to move throughout the simulation, build simple structures, survive through eating, and learn from its environment; they will also be able to mate with members of the opposite gender and produce offspring that will receive a random collection of hereditary traits from both parents. Moreover, the virtual characters will concoct their own language by pointing to objects and employing randomly generated "words." University of Surrey scientist Nigel Gilbert says the experiment could be particularly incisive if the simulated people develop ritual practices or learn to use non-functional objects symbolically. Indiana University's Edward Castronova is skeptical that NEW-TIES will generate important insights into human society and culture, arguing that "Inferences from an entirely artificial system are always going to be weakened by the artificiality." He says it is more sensible to study real human societies that mature within virtual fantasy environments.

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