Field Guide · models · emergence & computation
Computation from neighbours
Four rules. No exceptions. Endless behaviour.
John Conway's Game of Life (1970) is a grid of cells, each alive or dead. Every step, each cell looks at its eight neighbours and obeys the same four rules:
- A live cell with 2 or 3 live neighbours survives.
- A live cell with fewer than 2 dies (isolation).
- A live cell with more than 3 dies (overcrowding).
- A dead cell with exactly 3 live neighbours is born.
That is the entire universe. And yet from it come gliders that walk across the grid, oscillators that tick like clocks, and patterns that never settle. The Game of Life is, in fact, Turing-complete: with the right starting pattern it can compute anything a computer can. All of it — life-like motion, memory, computation — emerges from four rules about neighbours.
Draw your own cells above, or randomise and watch. The lesson is the same as the flock's: you do not need complicated rules to get complicated behaviour. You need simple rules, many parts, and interaction.