Future Generator

short description This piece was developed as part of my dissertation on Artificial Life. It's an interactive application founded on the bottom-up-approach of Artificial-Life-projects and simulates the future life of users by combining input-variables with statistical and random values. the concept After researching the history of artificial life and reading about the works of von Neumann, Lindenmayer, Reynolds, Ackley & Co. i decided to encounter the process life in a more lose connection for my workpiece. Every more serious approach would have needed programming knowledge i didn't possess and way more time than i had. Instead of referring to life as the self-organisation of matter, i dedicated this piece to the term life as it is used every day - the sequence of events or everyone's existence. This program is an attempt to simulate life by generating a list of actions that happen around a person. By feeding it different start parameters different outputs can be observed. It is based on the assumption that the possible course of one's life can be predicted based on certain information about the person. Data like the birth year, the sex and the level of education can be compared with typical statistical values and therefore determine the probability of the incidence of certain events. By providing personal attributes like the level of spontaneity, acitivty or ambition individuality can be added to the statistics. By combining these provided values with a certain randomness a large spectrum of possible results opens up. The interaction of user-data, statistics and chance should guide the output of the program to a possible future scenario. The code of the future generator is based on the bottom-up idea. As complexity in nature is based on the interdependency of smaller systems and is caused by rather simple rules, the seemingly random results of the program are based on the interaction of the entered basic parameters. A network of several functions is fed with the start parameters and interacts by sending each other values. They dependcy on each other makes it impossible to find simple linear explanations for resulting actions. Events are caused by the current states of variables and not by one specific triggering action. A slight increase of the stress factor can cause the loss of his job, make him find a better one, which lifts his mood and consequently leads to the start of a new relationship. No function links the connection of the stress-level to the start of a new relationship, everything happens as a chain reaction of different functions and values. At another state the increase of the stress-level can cause the person to start smoking, harm his health-value and die an earlier death. Calculating probabilties Many statistics are included in the program: population values, life expectancy, typical childrate or typical marriage age. The values are not set with fixed values, they each are attritubted with the linear changerate from the last decades. This allows to calculate the expected average divorce-rate for the year 2030. The values were obtained from several international statistics institutions. A function like the decision of a person should get married is linked to several values: if the person is in a relationship, the love parameter, the spontaneity level, the wish for children, the age difference to the typical marriage age or the duration of the relationship. Further the average marriage rate for that year will get calculated and a random number decides if a wedding is about to happen or not. If the typical rate lies at 75 percent, the function will cause a yes three out of four times. If the love parameter is very high or the person close to the typical age, the probability lies higher. If the relationship just started or the wish for children is rather low the probability will also go down. But as chance is the activ solution-maker, the program could even overcome a chance low as 1 percent. In a similar way the program decides if the person should continue his education, which job to choose, if to get divorced, if to start smoking and when to quit working. The program When entering the program the user is first asked to input several information about himself: sex, date of birth, height, weight, love status, children, education, job and field. Additional he has to say if he is a smoker or vegetarian and define a series of attributes like ambitious, active, spontaneous, moody, .. on a scale.



Then the entered are combined with the statistics and the user gets a statistical outlook on his future. He learns about the average life expectancy of his generation, the consequences of his smoking habits and the potential of a cancer-diagnosis. Also he learns how big the probability is of getting married and at what age.



After the presentation of the statistical analysis the actual life generation process starts. The user sees the progress of the calculations in the output window. Called functions and variable values are listed and display parts of the operation mode of the program to ensure credibility.



Afterwards the readout of the calculated events happens in a linear and non-interactive presentation of the possible future life of the user. An interface displays all the main parameters and their change over the years. A computergenerated voice tells the story of the events to happen in series. The events are accompanied by pictures and animation in the main window. screenshots