The Interpretation of Dreams: An Explanation of the Electric Sheep Distributed Screen Saver (O'Reilly)

[Posted December 23, 2003 by cook]

Scott Draves writes about a distributed computing project that generates animated fractal screen saver images. "The name Electric Sheep comes from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It realizes the collective dream of sleeping computers from all over the Internet. Electric Sheep is a distributed screen saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life forms. The project is an attention vortex. It illustrates the process by which the longer and closer one studies something, the more detail and structure appears."

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