# IAS Computer > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Computing History / Scientific Infrastructure **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The IAS computer was the stored-program machine developed under John von Neumann’s leadership at the Institute for Advanced Study. ## Nexus Context It served weather, weapons and artificial-evolution calculations. Barricelli used its few kilobytes of memory to run numerical populations in 1953, demonstrating that scientific infrastructure can support radically different epistemic and political purposes. ## Evidence Boundary Shared hardware lineage does not equate the moral purposes of its applications. Provenance should distinguish machine, funding, operators and projects. ## Relationships [[wiki/Institute for Advanced Study|Institute for Advanced Study]], [[wiki/Nils Aall Barricelli|Nils Aall Barricelli]], [[wiki/Ivy Mike|Ivy Mike]], [[wiki/Scientific Instrument|Scientific Instrument]] ## Sources / Provenance - Institute for Advanced Study computer-project histories; George Dyson, _Turing’s Cathedral_.