Conway's Game of Life — Four Rules, Infinite Behavior
The most famous cellular automaton in the world has four rules, a 2D grid of cells that are alive or dead, and no players at all. Conway's Game of Life is "played" by watching it unfold — and from its four trivial rules emerge gliders that travel, oscillators that pulse, guns that fire, and (astonishingly) structures that compute. This post is about the Game of Life: its rules, its menagerie of patterns, and why it became computer science's beloved emblem of emergence.
Four rules, a 2D grid of alive/dead cells, no players — and out come gliders that travel, oscillators that pulse, guns that fire, and structures that compute. Conway's Game of Life: its rules, its menagerie of emergent patterns, and why it became computer science's beloved emblem of emergence.