Prey Survey Part I

Remember the character Ian Malcolm, a polymath chaos theorist played by Jeff Goldblum in the Jurassic Park movies? In the opening pages of The Lost World, Ian Malcolm is giving a talk at the Santa Fe Institute:

“The Santa Fe Institute was housed in a series of buildings on Canyon Road which had formerly been a convent, and the Institute’s seminars were held in a room which had served as a chapel. Now, standing at the podium with a shaft of sunlight shining down on him, Ian Malcolm paused dramatically before continuing his lecture.”

He got the dates a little wrong as the institute had moved to another, much less interesting, location by 1993, when the seminar is supposed to have taken place. Michael Crichton told me the fictional Malcolm had been inspired by various influences, but that the Santa Fe Institute had left a lasting impression on him. His 2002 novel Prey was about the combination of nanotechnology and research on artificial life and swarm intelligence at the institute. The main character in Prey is a swarm scientist, loosely based by a mix of Eric Bonabeau and Chris Langton. I like to think it is mostly Eric Bonabeau (but who am I kidding?). If 20th Century Fox, who paid $5m in 1997 to acquire the film rights, decided to finally make a movie...