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First Self-Replicating Creature Spawned In Conway's Game of Life

Posted by Soulskill on from the emergent-gameplay dept.

Calopteryx writes "New Scientist has a story on a self-replicating entity which inhabits the mathematical universe known as the Game of Life. 'Dubbed Gemini, [Andrew Wade's] creature is made of two sets of identical structures, which sit at either end of the instruction tape. Each is a fraction of the size of the tape's length but, made up of two constructor arms and one "destructor," play a key role. Gemini's initial state contains three of these structures, plus a fourth that is incomplete. As the simulation progresses the incomplete structure begins to grow, while the structure at the start of the tape is demolished. The original Gemini continues to disassemble as the new one emerges, until after nearly 34 million generations, new life is born.'"

53 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Nanites by Pojut · · Score: 2, Funny

    They're coming to take over. Sure, of course there are only a few hundred at first...but then those become thousands, then millions, then billions. Soon, we will all be knee deep in this shit.

    lolwut?

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:Nanites by jgagnon · · Score: 2, Funny

      And to take care of them we'll create nannites. :p

      (or nanny-ites)

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    2. Re:Nanites by bunratty · · Score: 5, Funny

      IBM has already developed a high-fidelity 3-D copier. They scrapped the project when they realized they would likely sell only two units.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    3. Re:Nanites by smellsofbikes · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's a superb joke, but if you're bored and want to read some extensions of the idea you should find a copy of Venus Equilateral by George Smith some time. In one of the stories, engineers make (by mistake, basically) a device that can replicate other devices, and then realize it can replicate itself, so they build a few mostly for fun. Since they're on an isolated space station they transmit information about what they've done back to earth and then find out that earth's economy is collapsing because everyone's either duplicating money or duplicating duplication machines and there's no reason to buy anything. Smith explores how that affects the economy for a while (one character's snooty wife has to stop being a socialite and get a job as a nurse, because Smith was basically a 1930's misogynist) and then has his engineers cook up a physical item that contains energy, which the matter duplicator can't duplicate (since it only deals with matter) to act as a new basis for currency. He wrote all this in the 1940's, so, y'know, prior art and all that.

      --
      Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
    4. Re:Nanites by bunratty · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Is the "economy collapsing" a good thing or a bad thing? A good thing because everyone has all they want for free? Or a bad thing because now that there's no incentive to pay for products (information, entertainment, ideas) that there's no incentive to create new products (information, entertainment, ideas)?

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    5. Re:Nanites by selven · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A good thing, I say. Poverty will be eradicated, Wall Street will disappear into uselessness and everyone will have 16 hours a day of time to do whatever they want. People will want to create new stuff, even lacking any normal incentive, simply out of boredom.

    6. Re:Nanites by geekoid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Poverty will be eradicated

      no, it will change because the definition of wealth will change.
      Original work, labor, land. These will be the measure of wealth.

      "Wall Street will disappear into uselessness and "

      No, it will change to be used for people to by and sell shares of things that can't be duplicated.
      Original art*, manual labor and so on. When you want landscape done, what do you use to motivate people to do the work for you? A sky scraper? Barter? Land?

      "will have 16 hours a day of time to do whatever they want."
      Why do you assume they won't be beholden to a landlord?

      *yes the art can be duplicataty, but not the originality.

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    7. Re:Nanites by geekoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "To get medical treatment, you would need money. "

      No, you need something the doctor values. there is a big difference there. A doctor can replicate in car, boat, tv,, gold clubs whatever. Just like everyone else. So money, even the idea of money, looses its value.

      OTOH, he may want services., or just do it because they like to help people.

      Logically, this technology would mean that all physical items the doctor needs to treat people would be free. so his cost go down a lot.

      Many service wouldn't be needed. food service for one. Something breaks, you won't need to get it serviced because you would just get a new one.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    8. Re:Nanites by selven · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Poverty will be eradicated

      no, it will change because the definition of wealth will change.

      Poverty is not about being wealthy. As Wikipedia puts it, "poverty means being unable to afford basic human needs". If the basic human needs are provided for everyone, regardless of the social structure that emerges afterward there will by definition be no poverty.

      Why do you assume they won't be beholden to a landlord?

      Because land outside of cities is very cheap, and will get even cheaper if the demand to use it for food production disappears. Since the main point of living in cities is not having to drive 3 hours to work, and work will no longer be a part of many people's lives. For those who still want to work, the only kind of work left will largely be the kind you can do with a laptop transferring the fruits of your labor over the internet.

      Also, why shouldn't the concept of land ownership disappear entirely? Right now, its only legitimate purposes are privacy and managing agriculture and resource gathering rights. The second purpose will disappear, and the first one can be satisfied with dedicated laws that won't allow someone to gather up a whole bunch of land and rent it out at high prices.

    9. Re:Nanites by vrmlguy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A good thing, I say. Poverty will be eradicated, Wall Street will disappear into uselessness and everyone will have 16 hours a day of time to do whatever they want. People will want to create new stuff, even lacking any normal incentive, simply out of boredom.

      Unfortunately, history disagrees. The Samoan islands were a utopia; food was freely available by wading out into the bay and shelter was almost unnecessary due to the clement weather. So, everyone's favorite pastime was fucking and drowning the excess babies. Compare this to the Mediterranean, where earlier ecological collapse had ruined the farmlands and you needed walls to keep out hostile neighbors. The upper class'es favorite pastime? Natural philosophy.

      --
      Nothing for 6-digit uids?
  2. I thought someone had a glider gun... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought someone had come up with a glider gun which created & shot out other glider guns... this was about 20 years ago from my memory...

    1. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by emurphy42 · · Score: 4, Informative

      TFA mentions glider guns - they're indeed an old discovery, but they just create and shoot out gliders. This thing actually creates copies of itself.

    2. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 2, Interesting

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoloop

      Not exactly Conway's game of life, but similar concept, and it is certainly possible to encode this in Conway's game of life.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    3. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by jfengel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And doesn't a glider do that?

      Reading in between the lines of the article, it sounds like this thing manages to create the copy before the destruction of the original is complete, unlike a glider which is basically moving itself. But it seems a fairly arbitrary distinction, since that destruction is going to happen and it's not going to reverse itself.

      Perhaps the trick is that this thing can _teleport_ itself a few cells away, without passing through the intervening space, but again, that seems kind of an arbitrary and unimportant distinction.

    4. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If I understand correctly, it creates two copies while self-destructing in the process. So it is, indeed, replicating.

    5. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by natehoy · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, but it's mobile and runs completely on electricity, so it's an EV vehicle. It's got a CVT transmission and qualifies as a PZEV vehicle as well. I haven't seen the diagrams, but I assume it would run on DC current.

      When it runs out of power, your SOL of luck, though. But only an astute /.dot reader would know about that if they RTFAed the article.

      --
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    6. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by nacturation · · Score: 3, Informative

      Check out the forum where it was posted: http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=399&start=0

      That's the game of life forum - Conway is the guy who invented it.

      It may be a popular forum, but the domain conwaylife.com is not owned by Conway.

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    7. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by Pantero+Blanco · · Score: 2, Informative

      You would need a glider gun that shoots out more glider guns.

      Which would be hella fun, actually.

      There is a breeder pattern that uses a set of ships to produce a stream of glider guns, but (being regular Gosper Glider Guns) they don't move once they've been created.

      The applet on Paul Callahan's page has it stored as one of the example patterns.

    8. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, you're right. TFA is rather confusing on the precise nature of the thing, but the Gemini article on LifeWiki explains what it actually is:

      ... Alternatively, 'knightship' may refer to any spaceship that travels in an oblique direction (not diagonally or orthogonally). The first oblique spaceship to be discovered, Gemini, was found in May, 2010 with a velocity of (5120,1024)c/33699586. In June, 2010 Dave Greene constructed the first true knightship in Life, which is based on Gemini and travels at a velocity of (4096,8192)/c35567490.

    9. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by dvgrn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If I understand correctly, it creates two copies while self-destructing in the process. So it is, indeed, replicating.

      Now that's interesting.

      When i first read the headline I was befuddled. The whole point of the game is that its structures replicate themselves and create other things all over the map.

      But I don't recall ever seeing one that made multiple copies of itself, and then died.

      This is a tricky point. The people who say that this new pattern is not ultimately different from a glider are correct, in a sense -- the Gemini spaceship is technically a spaceship, not a replicator.

      It _does_ make two copies -- but the copies are of the two replicator units at the ends of the glider channels, not of the entire spaceship.

      But replicator units replicating themselves, even with the help of an outside stream of instructions (which is then reflected on to the next newly-created copy of a replicator unit) are still something that hasn't been seen before in the Life universe. So this is a much more impressive technical accomplishment than, say, finding a new variety of spaceship using a search utility.

      Gliders and spaceships "replicate" themselves in somewhat the same way that salt crystals or wildfires do -- that's just the way the universe works, you might say. But the Gemini pattern keeps itself going by continuously reconstructing itself, in *spite* of the way the universe normally works.

      The replicator units are like robots that include all the tools needed to make more robots exactly like themselves -- but they're radio-controlled and have no internal memory, so you have to pipe the actual construction recipe in from somewhere else. That means they're not self-contained self-replicators, true -- but they're a darn sight closer than a salt crystal or a glider!

      Eventually someone will build a pattern with an internal memory that can hold a complete self-construction recipe -- but the Gemini is an important milestone along the way to that goal, and the first true Life replicator will probably contain ideas taken from the Gemini, just as the Gemini contains ideas and mechanisms from preceding patterns.

    10. Re:I thought someone had a glider gun... by dvgrn · · Score: 3, Informative

      But the Gemini pattern keeps itself going by continuously reconstructing itself, in *spite* of the way the universe normally works.

      how so?

      I was hoping someone would ask that. Let me start out with a comparison to other cellular automata. Conway's Life is B3/S23 -- "born if 3 neighbors, survives if 2 or 3 neighbors". There are other rules, such as HighLife (B36/S23, very close to Conway's Life) in which a 12-cell pattern can replicate itself -- after 12 generations there are 2 copies, after 36 ticks there are 4 copies, and so on. This pattern regularly evolves from random starting states.

      There's even a rule, Fredkin's parity rule (B1357/S1257) where every possible pattern is a replicator -- an extreme example of replication being "just the way the universe works". But these replicators are, in some sense, too simple to be very interesting! They replicate the way crystals grow, and it's hard to harness that kind of low-level behavior. If you wanted a HighLife replicator with 13 cells, or one that would replicate in 13 ticks, instead of 12, you'd be out of luck. By comparison, the Gemini spaceship is extraordinarily adjustable.

      will this pattern repair itself if anything happens to it? will it protect itself from outside influences? like a cell wall protects the inside of a cell?

      No to all of the above. Conway's Life is not amenable to error-correction of this kind, because small changes have such huge consequences. Kind of like building machinery out of chunks of sub-critical enriched uranium: you can design it so that during normal operation the various pieces never come close enough together to start a chain reaction, but if any little thing goes wrong, you end up with high-energy particles flying all over the place, spreading the reaction to other nearby machinery, which then contributes to the explosion.

      so how is it reconstructing itself in spite of the things around it?

      Well, I didn't say "in spite of the things around it" -- it was "in spite of the way the universe normally works." The Life universe, for random patterns anyway, normally settles into a scattering of stable or P2-oscillating ash after a few hundred or a few thousand generations. There are any number of "lucky" self-perpetuating stationary and moving patterns that are exceptions to this general rule, but they're all very delicately balanced on the edge of chaos.

      how is this anything but a different kind of glider?

      The Gemini spaceship contains a large amount of data in its glider channels that is recognizably information about its own structure. Change that data, and the replicator unit will (usually) build something different. Most other gliders and spaceships in Conway's Life don't have anything like this -- all the other hundreds of patterns in Golly's Spaceships folder, or the tens of thousands in Koenig's Life Object database, are "naturally" self-perpetuating, because a future generation of the pattern happens to be identical to the original.

      The Gemini spaceship has a significantly higher degree of control over its environment: with the right change to its program, a Gemini replicator unit could construct anything that can be built by colliding gliders, in any empty space in the Life universe. The Gemini contains most or all of the construction tools that a Conway's Life self-replicator will need; it's just a few short steps away from being a true replicator. Mostly it just doesn't have the right program -- yet.

      There are a few other large patterns, especially Gabriel Nivasch's Caterpillar, that blur this line to some extent. However, the pi-climber "data" in the Caterpillar is much more difficult to reprogram than the gliders in the Gemini. Several new variants of the Gemini with different speeds and angles of travel have already been built -- with a lot of help from the Python scripts that Andrew Wade made available along with the pattern..

  3. At least we can kill it by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fortunately the glider gun is already discovered, so at least we have a means of killing this new self replicating entity. ;)

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  4. Most impressive and important pattern? by Tacvek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the article:

    In fact, this is arguably the single most impressive and important pattern ever devised.

    Really? Not the universal Turing machine pattern, or the pattern that emulates the game of life itself? Those both seem more impressive to me.

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    1. Re:Most impressive and important pattern? by paskie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And Score:4, Insightful? Of course the GP _was_ talking about patterns within the Game of Life itself.

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    2. Re:Most impressive and important pattern? by SomeJoel · · Score: 5, Funny

      From the article:

      In fact, this is arguably the single most impressive and important pattern ever devised.

      Really? Not the universal Turing machine pattern, or the pattern that emulates the game of life itself? Those both seem more impressive to me.

      Well, he did say "arguably", which is arguably the worst weasel word in the history of mankind.

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    3. Re:Most impressive and important pattern? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Those are patterns in the game of life itself. The Turing Machine one is particularly impressive. It demonstrates that the game itself is a Turing-complete computation engine - the more complex version is a Universal Turing Machine, so you can encode any arbitrary algorithm on the 'tape' (a streak of cells that runs diagonally across the grid).

      Given that it demonstrated the Turing completeness of the system, it's probably the most important pattern, as it shows that you can create a pattern with any algorithmic behaviour that you want. This includes providing a proof that the pattern discussed in TFA is possible, although not (of course) telling you how to create it. This pattern is interesting, but knowing that it's possible is more interesting than knowing exactly what it is.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:Most impressive and important pattern? by falzer · · Score: 5, Informative

      What are you talking about, non-existing? They both exist.

      http://conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=Universal_turing_machine
      http://conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=Turing_machine

      http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=P5760_unit_Life_cell

    5. Re:Most impressive and important pattern? by smellsofbikes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      From the article:

      In fact, this is arguably the single most impressive and important pattern ever devised.

      Really? Not the universal Turing machine pattern, or the pattern that emulates the game of life itself? Those both seem more impressive to me.

      Well, he did say "arguably", which is arguably the worst weasel word in the history of mankind.

      FUNNY! But at the same time, I think weasel words are critically important. Science should be based on weasel words: may, could, indicates, possibly, probably, likely. When you hear someone saying non-weasel words: is, will, shall, always -- you're either talking to God or to someone who talks to God. Mathematicians, for instance, which is why they can say that in base 10, two plus two IS four. But past that, I'm all for weasel words.

      --
      Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
    6. Re:Most impressive and important pattern? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Great! But does it run NetBSD?

    7. Re:Most impressive and important pattern? by Toridas · · Score: 5, Funny

      I agree. Weaseling out of things is an important thing to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.

  5. Re:Third! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Self Replicating post! :-P
    Self Replicating post! :-P
    Self Replicating post! :-8

    uh oh mutation...

  6. Not to be a killjoy but... by russotto · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If a new pattern is created while an old one is destroyed, it's not self-replicating; it's just moving.

    1. Re:Not to be a killjoy but... by Binder · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You mean like a human giving birth to another human and then dying off?

    2. Re:Not to be a killjoy but... by russotto · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You mean like a human giving birth to another human and then dying off?

      If every time one human was born, an identical human died, it would be like that.

    3. Re:Not to be a killjoy but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is slashdot -- some people here think that's actually how it works, while many more think births are all faked by the government, and still more are arguing for more openness in the early stages of the process.

    4. Re:Not to be a killjoy but... by Migala77 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      still more are arguing for more openness in the early stages of the process.

      The internet is for 'more openness in the early stages of the process'!

  7. Re:First! by nomorecwrd · · Score: 4, Funny

    OMG!!... What have I done... it is already mutating and evolving.

    Elf Replicating Ghost ;-D

  8. that's what the entire universe is: by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    some alien 43 dimensional child's entry in the local science fair

    "look: i've created self-replicating life based on a few simple rules!"

    and the judge says: "but it's only 4 dimensions, and one of the dimensions is only one way. shoddy, very simplistic, not a good middle school level effort"

    to which the alien's mom says: "don't worry honey, next year we'll put baking soda and vinegar in a paper mache cone and simulate a volcano!"

    and the alien child says: "that's ok mom, i don't like science anymore, i want to be a ranch hand. bye bye, little universe critters, i always thought you were cute"

    and then he pulls the plug on his simulation, and trillions of animal, plant, and human lives on earth and septillions of lives on the other inhabited planets cease to exist in a puff

    --
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    1. Re:that's what the entire universe is: by TheHawke · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh man, that just made me get uneasy there for a while. Fantastic piece of writing you have done! You really should consider building that skill up and start submitting manuscripts.

      --
      First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
    2. Re:that's what the entire universe is: by tom17 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oh, a book.

  9. For those who don't know about the Game of Life by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Game of Life is one of the first cellular automata discovered that had simple rules but complicated behavior. The rules very roughly mimic bacterial growth. One has an infinite lattice grid, and some starting set of cells on the grid are designated as alive (every cell on the grid is either alive or dead). Each new generation is made by the following four rules: Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies. Any living cell with more than three live neighbors dies. Any living cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation. Any dead cell with three live neighbors (exactly) becomes a live cell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

    The Game of Life is mathematically interesting because it can be shown to be Turing complete. That is, if you have a process that tells you whether any given starting configuration will eventually dieout then you can answer whether any given computer program will eventually halt. In general, there's a theorem known as the Turing Halting Theorem which says that no general procedure exists to do that for all programs.

    Prior to the work in TFA, there were known configurations called "gliders" which could replicate themselves as they moved across the grid, but they only left the same number of copies. There were also configurations which could spawn gliders (called glider guns). However, no configuration that was actually self-replicating in the sense of spawning more copies of itself was known. This work by Andrew Wade shows how to make configurations that do self-replicate. His original announcement is at http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=399&start=0 and the actual configuration can be found at https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9e96aFfebqqZmY5NjBkYjctY2ViNi00NmJlLTgwZDAtNmU5OTQwYjc1OWQ0&hl=en&pli=1 Thus, this very simply system is still showing itself to have surprising and interesting behavior 30 years after the fact.

    Als

    1. Re:For those who don't know about the Game of Life by Ether · · Score: 4, Informative

      Turing-complete means that it is able to perform all of the functions of a universal Turing machine, not that it is able to solve the Turing halting problem; a Turing-complete language (or system) by definition is unable to solve the halting problem expressed within that system.

      --
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    2. Re:For those who don't know about the Game of Life by Vasheron · · Score: 2

      The concepts of "Turning Complete" and the "Halting Problem" are distinct.

      Where did I say otherwise? This was exactly the point I was trying to make. I was not arguing against with the fact that a Turing machine cannot solve the Halting Problem. I was arguing with the GP's implied assertion that the fact that a language cannot describe a solution to the Halting Problem is part of the definition of what it means to be Turing-complete. Yes, it was an extremely pedantic and nitpicky thing to do - I'll admit that - but, I am correct. One must prove that Turing machines cannot solve the Halting Problem in order to state it as fact.

      I believe you are just trying to regurgitate concepts that your professors lectured about to appear educated. You fail.

      I hold a BS in mathematics (with honors) and a minor in computer science from a good university. I have won numerous awards and national scholarships on the basis of my demonstrated ability. I consider multivariate calculus bedtime reading. If that is failure, what exactly do I have to do in order to succeed?

  10. WireWorld is more fun to play with. by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My favorite CA is WireWorld. The designs in the CA look and behave like circuit boards. People have designed some very complex "computers" in it.

    WireWorld on Wikipedia

    This flash-based wireworld app is listing prime numbers.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  11. Re:Conway? by gnieboer · · Score: 3, Funny

    What, you never landed on the "you've had a baby, collect presents" block?

    I suppose there wasn't a loop from selling the kids to having the kids go to "start".

  12. Displacement not Self-Replicating by porter235 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yep, and if you read the entry on LifeWiki you would see they agree with you.

    "It displaces itself by 5120 cells vertically and 1024 cells horizontally every 33,699,586 generations."

  13. Re:Third! by zill · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's obviously intelligent design. Burn the heathen!

  14. Google Docs is slashdotted... Alternate download by gbrayut · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Google Docs page with the Gemini.zip file is not allowing any more downloads right now. Here is another link with more info about Gemini and an alternate download hosted on drop.io. Follow the instructions on page 2 of the original article to set it up.

  15. Re:Third! by raving+griff · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Considering the +5 Funny score, I would say the trait is quite beneficial.

  16. Re:Third! by durrr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Detrimental traits such as lactose-intolerance can be preserved if there is no or weak evolutionary pressure for this trait. But over time and changing enviroments it's the beneficial traits that are more likely to preserve the genotype.
    A better wording is perhaps that the enviromental viability of a geno and phenotype is what is the driving force behind evolution.

  17. toggle overdrive by Chirs · · Score: 2, Informative

    beside the rabbit is the radiation-looking thing. Toggle it and it runs 100x faster.

    The number 2 pops out at around 11000 or so.

  18. Re:Monsatan by Miseph · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's Hannah Montana.

    OH GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!?

    Kill it with fire, kill it with fire!

    --
    Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
  19. Good thing by mangu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is the "economy collapsing" a good thing or a bad thing? A good thing because everyone has all they want for free? Or a bad thing because now that there's no incentive to pay for products (information, entertainment, ideas) that there's no incentive to create new products (information, entertainment, ideas)?

    If not being paid removes the incentive to create new products, then how do you explain Linux, or any other Free Software?

    Not getting paid to do it means that products, entertainment, information, ideas will be created not for the necessity of earning a living, but for love of the product.

    Imagine a world where anyone is free to create exactly what he or she wants, the way it should be done, not being constrained by a boss. Imagine you having access to all those creations, being able to choose freely which one you like best, not having to worry about the price.