Around the same time, he worked with Doyne Farmer and other friends in Santa Cruz, California to form the Eudaemons collective, to develop a strategy for beating the roulette wheel using a toe-operated computer. The computer could, in theory, predict in what area a roulette ball would land on a wheel, giving the player a significant statistical advantage over the house. Although the project itself was a success, they ran into practical difficulty employing the technique on-site in Las Vegas casinos. The experiences of Norman, Doyne Farmer, and crew were later chronicled in the book The Eudaemonic Pie (1985) by Thomas Bass. Their experience was also chronicled on the History Channel television series "Breaking Vegas."
In 1985 Packard moved with Wolfram to the physics department of the University of Illinois, where they founded the Center for Complex Systems Research.
Santa Fe Institute
Packard was involved with the Santa Fe Institute over many years, serving in several capacities including External Professor and member of the chair of the Science Steering Committee.
Prediction Company
In the spring of 1985, Packard and Doyne Farmer realized that their research in fields such as chaos, Genetic Algorithms and cellular automata could help build a system for predicting the stock market. Five years later they founded Prediction Company, a small company in Santa Fe, NM dedicated to making a model for predicting what a market would do during a certain time period. A brief outline of some of the genetic algorithm techniques he used in the early days is presented in chapter 2 of reference 5 below. In 2004, Prediction Company received the "Employer of Choice" award in the small size category for the State of New Mexico.[6] Prediction Company was eventually acquired by UBS.
European Center for Living Technology
In 2004, Packard was one of the founders of the European Centre for Living Technology (ECLT), hosted by the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari.[7] The ECLT received its first funding from PACE (Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution), a project coordinated by John S. McCaskill and funded by the European Union.[8] From its inception in 2004 and for over a decade Packard has served on its science board, and as co-director.
ProtoLife
While in Venice, Packard founded ProtoLife, the first company to capitalize on living technology. The goal of the company is to optimize complex chemical reactions and other complex processes. The company was launched in Venice, Italy, and is currently based in San Francisco having changed name to Daptics[9] (see below).
Lucky Sort
In 2011 Packard joined Lucky Sort[10] as Chief Science Officer. At Lucky Sort he guides research to discover and display structure in high volume text data streams. Lucky Sort was eventually acquired by Twitter.
Daptics
In 2018, Packard launched a web-based optimization and discovery tool on the internet (a form of Software as a Service), changing the company name from ProtoLife to Daptics,[11] to better reflect its new focus. The goal of the company is to optimize complex chemical reactions and other complex processes. The company is currently based in San Francisco.
Books
Artificial Life VII, with Mark A. Bedau, John S. McCaskill, Steen Rasmussen. 2000
Protocells, with Steen Rasmussen, Mark Bedau, Liaohai Chen, David Deamer, David Krakauer, and Peter Stadler
‘’Adaptation Toward the Edge of Chaos’’, Norman H. Packard, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Center for Complex Systems Research, 1988
^H. Packard, Norman (1988). "Adaptation Toward the Edge of Chaos". University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Center for Complex Systems Research. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
^Bedau, Mark A.; Packard, Norman H. (1992). "Measurement of evolutionary activity, teleology, and life". In Langton, Chris; Taylor, Charles; Farmer, Doyne; Rasmussen, Steen (eds.). Artificial Life II. Addison-Wesley.