A New Kind of Science: Ten Years Later

The present author personally read the book with great interest when it was first published. Of particular interest then and now are the many illustrations, particularly those of the complex patterns generated by certain cellular automata systems, such as rule 30 and rule 110, as contrasted with the very regular patterns produced by other rules. In this regard, graphical analyses of these cellular automata rules join a select group of modern mathematical phenomena (including, for example, studies of the Mandlebrot set, chaotic iterations and certain topological manifolds) that have been studied graphically as well as analytically. In looking again at ANKS, the present author is struck today, as in 2002, with the many interesting items in the endnote section, which occupies 350 pages of two-column, small-font text. In some respects, the endnotes of ANKS constitute an encyclopedia of sorts, covering, in concise yet highly readable form, historical background, mathematical foundations and scientific connections of a wide variety of topics related to modern-day computing. Much of this material remains as cogent and interesting today as when it was written over ten years ago. Some of the particularly interesting endnote passages are the following: