[geeks] I WANT THIS BOOK

[dave at cca.org]

mrbill at mrbill.net writes:

>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1579550088

>Great writeup on Wolfram and this book in the latest issue of Wired.

The writeup I saw credited him with "discovering" all sorts of
things that were well known back in the 1950s.

Self replicating cellular automata: JvN, 1950s. Check.
Universally general computers: Alan Turing, 1950s. Check.
Extremely simple CA rule resulting in incredible complexity: 
	John Conway, 1950s. Check.
Simple set of rules behind everything: GUT, major goal
	of all particle physicists for most of the 20th century. Check.
General purpose computation using CA: 1970s? Not sure who. Check.

The major innovation seems to be his level of arrogance.

This isn't going to have any impact on science.  It's intense gee-wiz
stuff, with little or no concrete real world application. Sort of like
Mandelbrot's Fractal Geometry of Nature.

If you like this sort of thing, Levy's "Artificial Life" is a good
read, without claiming to be the word of God.

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org ------
-------- "I prefer the ridiculous to the sublime." - James Chance ---------