ALife Meets Web: Lessons Learned

Artificial life might come to play important roles for the World Wide Web, both as a source of new algorithmic paradigms and as a source of inspiration for its future development. New Web searching and managing techniques, based on artificial life principles, have been elicited by the striking similarities between the Web and natural environments. New Web interface designs, based on artificial life techniques, have resulted in increased aesthetic appeal, smart animations, and clever interactive rules. In this paper we exemplify these observations by surveying a number of meeting points between artificial life and the Web. We touch on a few implementation issues and attempt to draw some lessons to be learned from these early experiences.