John Long (11) (1964–)

Meandering discussion of the use of mechanical fish to study evolution.

I put this down for a while, but it is still on my radar to finish. Long looks at evolutionary biology and at using robots to better study how the mechanisms may work. Specifically he looks at fish locomotion. If you can build a robot that mimics the motion, you can gain insight in to HOW that animal moves in that way, and how that came about. I find Long's style not so light that this is easy, popular reading, but not heavy and overbearing to prevent the non-academic from enjoying it.

The author describes his experiences with biomimetic robots as a research tool in evolutionary biology -- particularly the evolution of fish vertebrae. Of more interest to me were the short forays into neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Anyone looking for speculations on machine consciousness, transhumanism, etc, will be disappointed.