I recently came across the video of the talk I gave for Ars Eectronica in 2003. Not much to see - just me on stage with a microphone and a few slides, but the (slightly fuzzy) audio is now online. My audience was a bunch of computational artists who as usual I managed to insult (always a good trick to make 'em listen). One tried to be a bit rude at the end with her question, but you'll note the admirable patience I showed :) I talk about code, and how programming computers and biological systems relate to each other. Those who know where my research went in the following 5 years will find many of the concepts I describe familiar. You can listen to the 40 minute talk, including questions, here:

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/p.bentle y/arstalk.mp3

I'm a collaborating Prof in KAIST, Korea so I go over there now and again. At the beginning of this month I was in Jeju, Korea giving a talk for some high school children. The organisers just sent me some photos. Although in this picture I look like I'm teaching karate, I was talking about evolutionary computation and showing some of the videos from my first book Evolutionary Design by Computers (and also gave them a Korean version of Digital Biology). The school specialised in science education, and you could tell. Not only did the kids cope with a talk in English, but they asked detailed technical questions on genetic algorithms. I've had less intelligent questions from fellow scientists in academic conferences! I'm afraid they put British school children to shame...

I gave a talk for TESLA (our arts-science group at UCL) in November 2007. The topic is a common one for me - the nature of computation in biological or natural systems. If I ever get around to writing a sequel to Digital Biology it'll be on this kind of stuff. At the end I also talk a little about science communication in general. They've recently put a rather noisy recording of the talk online here:

http://www.arts- humanities.net/audio/peter_bentley_viewing_systemic_computation

On July 9, 2007 I played "Dimbleby" to a debate in the Great Hall of the Natural History Museum. We'd invited Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones and Lewis Wolpert. (Richard did the foreword for my first book, Steve suggested I use his literary agent when I was writing Digital Biology- which I did, and Lewis collaborated with one of my PhD students). It was great fun, with our voices echoing out and reaching the ears of 600 people in the audience. The topic was evolution of compexity, and we covered a good range of topics. The occasion formed the keynote event for the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference that I helped run at UCL at the same time. You can still download the audio or video of the whole event from here: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/st aff/p. bentley/evodebate.html

Reading this back I'm not sure I really answered this excellent question as thoroughly or clearly as I could have, but there you go. It's a reader's query and response from 2004:

I read Digital Biology a few years ago and there's one topic I keep revisiting as I can't seem to reconcile all of it's elements--swarm intelligence.

Your criteria for effective swarm intelligence were something along the lines of

1. Randomness of events

2. Positive feedback

3. Negative feedback

4. Disproportionate fluctuation

The first three items make perfect sense to me, but the fourth doesn't seem to be absolutely necessary--can't a bee hive or ant colony survive without it? I understood your lottery example but wasn't able to translate it into something absolutely necessary for a colony of ants. If you could explain the need for disproportionate fluctuation in the context of an ant hill perhaps it would drive the point home.

I really enjoyed your book. I picked it up because I hoped to learn about naturally occurring types of organization in the hopes that I could apply them to business. It was one of those rare instances when the book covered exactly what I'd hoped it would cover. An unintended benefit was that your book has helped me to think through business problems on a more elemental level in order to better isolate the problem from the symptoms.

Thanks and regards,

I believe the fourth one was "amplification of fluctuations" - and it was thought of by an Entomologist. You need to amplify the fluctuation in order for the "choice" to be made by the system. I agree that these can be stated more concisely, however - which is what I tried to do elsewhere in the book. Glad you enjoyed it :)