Emerging technology system evolution

Abstract

This paper introduces a strategy for exploring possibility spaces for creative design of emerging technology systems. These systems are represented as directed acyclic graphs with nodes representing different technologies and data or media types. The naming of system and data components is intended to be populated by a subjective, personal ontology. The source material can be simply modified by a user who wishes to explore a space of possibilities, constrained by specific resources, to generate simple visual descriptions of systems that can be quickly browsed. These dataflow visualizations are a familiar representation to those who use visual programming interfaces for creative media processing. An interactive genetic programming based approach is used with small populations of individual designs. The system is being developed using web browser technology. A minimum functionality proof of concept system has been implemented. Next steps and current challenges are discussed.