The WireWorld Computer

For me this computer provided one of those rare aha! moments. I finally got what all the fuss about Cellular Automata (CA) and Conway's 'Game of Life' (GoL) is all about. I'm aware that the GoL has been proved to be Turing Complete too, but then in the case of WireWorld CA, seeing is believing.

It is said "a picture is worth a thousand words", in this case, a picture [1] is worth a tome [2].

[1] http://www.quinapalus.com/wires11.html

[2] http://www.wolframscience.com/thebook.html

(psst...NKS copies are available for $1-2 and are excellent bed risers! ;)

I really think there are some really powerful applications for this going forward. Building computation/logical rules into the materials to organically create complex structures might be one way to achieve goals synthetic approaches cannot. Reminds me of Saul Griffith's talk at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/saul_griffith_on_everyday_invention...

The style of logic used here resembles quantum dot cellular automata:

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