OOC & Conway's Game of Life
The first set of readings in
Out Of Control (specifically the
Hive Mind chapter) reminded me of
John Horton Conway's Game of Life (
demo applet), which I discovered via
Hackers, by Steven Levy.
The Game itself became an early computer simulation involving patterns of 'cells' and accompanying rules which led to many unexpected and unintended results. Eventually a whole lexicon of self-sustaining and animated patterns was assembled by the game's obsessive players.
It was introduced in Martin Gardner's
October 1970 Mathematical Recreations column in Scientific American. There are plenty of other Life
resources and examples on the web, and Kelly talks about it in
chapter 17 of
OOC.
Posted by patrick at February 4, 2003 09:00 AM