TechnoSphere

TechnoSphere was an online digital environment launched on September 1, 1995 and hosted on a computer at a UK university. TechnoSphere, created by Jane Prophet and Dr Gordon Selley, was a place where users from around the globe could create creatures and release them into the 3D environment, described by the creators as a "digital ecology." Earlier incarnations of TechnoSphere didn't have the advantage of web-accessible 3D graphics, but was still governed by chaos theory and similar algorithms that determined each creature's unique behavior based on their components and interactions with each other and their environment. This online program was one of many digital artificial life simulations that evolved as the World Wide Web began to grow. Many museums and classrooms found the tool to be a valuable complement to learning material on natural selection and ecosystems. The experiment operated online until 2002 and was unavailable until January 15, 2007 when it was launched again but as of November 2012 is again off-line.