Library Concept
Cellular automata
A grid of cells, each in one of a small set of states, updated all at once by a simple local rule — from which strikingly complex global behavior can emerge.
A grid of cells, each holding one of a small set of states, updated simultaneously across the whole grid by a simple rule that looks only at each cell’s immediate neighbors — from which strikingly complex, often unpredictable global patterns can emerge from purely local rules. John von Neumann developed the concept in the late 1940s, working from a lattice formalism suggested by Stanislaw Ulam, in pursuit of a mathematically rigorous self-reproducing automaton. John Conway’s Game of Life, published by Martin Gardner in Scientific American in October 1970, remains the best-known example.