LeMasters/conways game of life NYTimes

## conways game of life NYTimes
** See what you can do by putting this into HTML markup using the HTML elements we've covered so far.  Remember:  There is not always a "right answer".  Sometimes (sometimes!) it comes down to judgment.  The trick is to ask:  Is my choice a meaningful one, and have I made that choice consistently?


From the New York Times
Siobhan Roberts
Dec 28, 2020

The Lasting Lessons of John Conway's Game of Life.


In March of 1970, Martin Gardner opened a letter jammed with ideas for his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Sent by John Conway, then a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, the letter ran 12 pages, typed hunt-and-peck style.

Page 9 began with the heading “The game of life.” It described an elegant mathematical model of computation — a cellular automaton, a little machine, of sorts, with groups of cells that evolve from iteration to iteration, as a clock advances from one second to the next.

Dr. Conway, who died in April, having spent the latter part of his career at Princeton, sometimes called Life a “no-player, never-ending game.” Mr. Gardner called it a “fantastic solitaire pastime.”

The game was simple: Place any configuration of cells on a grid, then watch what transpires according to three rules that dictate how the system plays out.

The pioneering electronic musician Brian Eno long contended that Conway's Game of Life operated in parallel to his own theories of composition.  He explains:

---- ENO -----

I first encountered Life at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1978. I was hooked immediately by the thing that has always hooked me — watching complexity arise out of simplicity.

Life ought to be very predictable and boring; after all, there are just three simple rules that determine the position of some dots on a grid. That really doesn’t sound very interesting until you start tweaking those rules and watching what changes.

Life shows you two things. The first is sensitivity to initial conditions. A tiny change in the rules can produce a huge difference in the output, ranging from complete destruction (no dots) through stasis (a frozen pattern) to patterns that keep changing as they unfold.

The second thing Life shows us is something that Darwin hit upon when he was looking at Life, the organic version. Complexity arises from simplicity! That is such a revelation; we are used to the idea that anything complex must arise out of something more complex. Human brains design airplanes, not the other way around. Life shows us complex virtual “organisms” arising out of the interaction of a few simple rules — so goodbye “Intelligent Design.”

---- end of ENO quote


According to mathematician Susan Stepney:


-- STEPNEY ---

In the Artificial Life community, Life is a foundational piece of work. It sits in the background, influencing the way people think of life “in silico.”

Life probably maintains its interest for two reasons. One is that the whole field of cellular automata is very important, because computationally it can be used to model so many different things — for example, physical systems from fluid dynamics to coupled magnetic spins to chemical reaction-diffusion systems.

The other reason is that it’s just cool and pretty and great to look at. When you speed it up, it flows and boils and bubbles; it actually comes to look alive.

--- end of STEPNEY quote ---

The Game of Life’s pulsing, pyrotechnic constellations are classic examples of emergent phenomena, introduced decades before that adjective became a buzzword.

Fifty years later, the misfortunes of 2020 are the stuff of memes. The biggest challenges facing us today are emergent: viruses leaping from species to species; the abrupt onset of wildfires and tropical storms as a consequence of a small rise in temperature; economies in which billions of free transactions lead to staggering concentrations of wealth; an internet that becomes more fraught with hazard each year. Looming behind it all is our collective vision of an artificial intelligence-fueled future that is certain to come with surprises, not all of them pleasant.

The name Conway chose — the Game of Life — frames his invention as a metaphor. But I’m not sure that even he anticipated how relevant Life would become, and that in 50 years we’d all be playing an emergent game of life and death.
	** See what you can do by putting this into HTML markup using the HTML elements we've covered so far. Remember: There is not always a "right answer". Sometimes (sometimes!) it comes down to judgment. The trick is to ask: Is my choice a meaningful one, and have I made that choice consistently?



	From the New York Times
	Siobhan Roberts
	Dec 28, 2020

	The Lasting Lessons of John Conway's Game of Life.


	In March of 1970, Martin Gardner opened a letter jammed with ideas for his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Sent by John Conway, then a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, the letter ran 12 pages, typed hunt-and-peck style.

	Page 9 began with the heading “The game of life.” It described an elegant mathematical model of computation — a cellular automaton, a little machine, of sorts, with groups of cells that evolve from iteration to iteration, as a clock advances from one second to the next.

	Dr. Conway, who died in April, having spent the latter part of his career at Princeton, sometimes called Life a “no-player, never-ending game.” Mr. Gardner called it a “fantastic solitaire pastime.”

	The game was simple: Place any configuration of cells on a grid, then watch what transpires according to three rules that dictate how the system plays out.

	The pioneering electronic musician Brian Eno long contended that Conway's Game of Life operated in parallel to his own theories of composition. He explains:

	---- ENO -----

	I first encountered Life at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1978. I was hooked immediately by the thing that has always hooked me — watching complexity arise out of simplicity.

	Life ought to be very predictable and boring; after all, there are just three simple rules that determine the position of some dots on a grid. That really doesn’t sound very interesting until you start tweaking those rules and watching what changes.

	Life shows you two things. The first is sensitivity to initial conditions. A tiny change in the rules can produce a huge difference in the output, ranging from complete destruction (no dots) through stasis (a frozen pattern) to patterns that keep changing as they unfold.

	The second thing Life shows us is something that Darwin hit upon when he was looking at Life, the organic version. Complexity arises from simplicity! That is such a revelation; we are used to the idea that anything complex must arise out of something more complex. Human brains design airplanes, not the other way around. Life shows us complex virtual “organisms” arising out of the interaction of a few simple rules — so goodbye “Intelligent Design.”

	---- end of ENO quote



	According to mathematician Susan Stepney:



	-- STEPNEY ---

	In the Artificial Life community, Life is a foundational piece of work. It sits in the background, influencing the way people think of life “in silico.”

	Life probably maintains its interest for two reasons. One is that the whole field of cellular automata is very important, because computationally it can be used to model so many different things — for example, physical systems from fluid dynamics to coupled magnetic spins to chemical reaction-diffusion systems.

	The other reason is that it’s just cool and pretty and great to look at. When you speed it up, it flows and boils and bubbles; it actually comes to look alive.

	--- end of STEPNEY quote ---

	The Game of Life’s pulsing, pyrotechnic constellations are classic examples of emergent phenomena, introduced decades before that adjective became a buzzword.

	Fifty years later, the misfortunes of 2020 are the stuff of memes. The biggest challenges facing us today are emergent: viruses leaping from species to species; the abrupt onset of wildfires and tropical storms as a consequence of a small rise in temperature; economies in which billions of free transactions lead to staggering concentrations of wealth; an internet that becomes more fraught with hazard each year. Looming behind it all is our collective vision of an artificial intelligence-fueled future that is certain to come with surprises, not all of them pleasant.

	The name Conway chose — the Game of Life — frames his invention as a metaphor. But I’m not sure that even he anticipated how relevant Life would become, and that in 50 years we’d all be playing an emergent game of life and death.