What boys and girls are made of

SUGAR and spice motivated many an explorer, and the voyages of discovery that resulted from European demand for these products were the basis for building powerful empires. Today, the same resources are still stimulating the development of new trading societies--but now those societies are growing inside computers, rather than overseas. And in watching these artificial societies grow, their inventors are starting their own voyage of discovery--one they hope will provide insights into real societies that have thus far been denied to conventional social science.