Subscribe now

STANDING outside the law courts in London, James Dyson triumphantly
brandished a DC01 vacuum cleaner. This was the product whose revolutionary
bag-free design had brought Dyson from the edge of bankruptcy to dominance of
the European market. It had taken him 14 years and 5000 prototypes to perfect,
so when deadly rival Hoover brought out a strikingly similar bagless cleaner in
1999, Dyson was surprised, then suspicious—and finally incensed.

In a legal battle that lasted over a year and finally ended last October,
Dyson claimed that in bringing out a rival bagless cleaner Hoover had infringed
patents on features that Dyson had perfected through years of trial and error.
The court agreed, forcing Hoover to withdraw its machine from sale and pay Dyson
substantial damages. It is a case widely hailed as a victory for the lone genius
against the faceless forces of big business.

Don’t expect many more of them, though. For the dog-eat-dog world of modern
business is about to see the advent of a terrifying new predator, a positive
tyrannosaur of a technology that threatens the survival of all but the fittest
commercial behemoths. It is the spawn of an unearthly mating of Darwin’s theory
of evolution with ultra-fast computers.

Called genetic programming (GP), it involves creating thousands of virtual
products inside a computer, and letting them fight for survival, with the
fittest being allowed to breed. It sounds like Toy Story on acid, but a
squad of computer scientists led by John Koza of Stanford University in
California has brought it to life. Using GP it took them a
matter of hours to breed products…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

Sign up

To continue reading, subscribe today with our introductory offers

View introductory offers

No commitment, cancel anytime*

Offer ends 2nd of July 2024.

*Cancel anytime within 14 days of payment to receive a refund on unserved issues.

Inclusive of applicable taxes (VAT)

or

Existing subscribers

Sign in to your account