Cellular Automata
If Man can and does evolve, why not computers' Alan Turing, whoargued that a computer could respond intelligently to a human askingquestions, believes that the essence of the phenomenal consciousness isheld within the scientific or computational aspects of biologicalfunctioning. The first step towards this end is seen in the discovery andunderstanding of cellular automata or CA. "CA are systems in which cellsthat are laid out in a regular spatial grid change color (state) accordingto rules that depend on the color of the cell and its nearest neighbors.By applying the same simple rules over and over again, CA can generate awide variety of patterns, some of which are highly symmetric likesnowflakes, others that appear random, and others that look basically thesame on all scales (fractals)" (Naiditch 31). CA may be explained as being discrete "systems whose behavior isspecified in terms of a local relation, much like the universe itself.(O)bjects that may be interpreted as passive data and objects that may beinterpreted as computing devices are both assembled out of the same kind ofstructural elements, and subject to the same laws; computation andconstruction are just two possible modes o
, thinking is what people do, and for amachine to be intelligent it must do what people do. "Cellular processing languages, such as Cellang [Eckart 1992], CARPET[Spezzano and Talia 1997], CDL, and CEPROL [Seutter 1985], allow cellularalgorithms to be described by defining the state of cells as a typedvariable, or a record of typed variables, and a transition functioncontaining the evolution rules of an automaton. In some cases, use a special-purposelanguage designed to facilitate the description of CAs may be utilized(Weimar Internet source). "Inthe end, asserts Wolfram, "it will turn out that every detail of ouruniverse does indeed follow rules that can be represented by a very simpleprogram--and that everything we see will ultimately emerge just fromrunning this program. The program, Mathematica, which simulates thesingle cell attribute of a CA, was written by Stephen Wolfram in an object-oriented extension of the C language. The discovery of the principles of CA makes the possibility ofperforming computations within two quantum states concurrently - or havingseveral different energies (or states) at once. He also "was also able to show thatthere are some things that none of our computers could ever do--problems noprogram could ever solve. Using CA computational modes, the 'Turing barrier' may be overcome. Turing proved thatthere are things computers can't do because of a mathematical barrier. The basic foundation ofthe creative process is to be able to discover new and unique solutions, tobe able to observe and come to conclusions, to reason - something that a'computing machine' is lacking and of which humans are still unable tocompletely describe or understand. This result places limits on all of science. The machine he built was, basically, "a stripped-downprocessor which, he proved, could do anything that any digital computerwould ever be able to do" (Chown 24).
Common topics in this essay:
CA CA,
Aristotle Descartes,
Alan Turing,
Using CA,
CEPROL Seutter,
Skillicorn Talia,
Anonymous Internet,
Weimar Internet,
Stephen Wolfram,
SIMD SPMD,
chown 24,
cellular automata,
objects interpreted,
internet source,
able chown,
able chown 24,
alan turing,
|