Publications

Wired (12/02) Vol. 10, No. 12, P. 180; Kelly, Kevin

Digital physicists argue that the universe could well be the ultimate computer, and that all existence is, in essence, a function of computation. Adding weight to such suppositions are the theories that all things--equations, multimedia works, even emotions--can be reduced to computation; all materials--be they DNA molecules, human brains, or quantum particles, are capable of computation; and all computation is universal--in other words, any computer can carry out the same computations, regardless of its configuration. The groundwork for the universe-as-computer theory was laid out by researchers Ed Fredkin and Konrad Zuse, who concluded independently that the driving force behind the universe is a grid of cellular automata (CA). Later physicists such as Stephen Wolfram used the CA model to research real-world phenomena. Wolfram was so taken with this view and the universal computation theory that he declared in "A New Kind of Science" that "All processes, whether they are produced by human effort or occur spontaneously in nature, can be viewed as computation." He further expanded this theory to include all outputs of universal computation. Entire galaxies and recursive worlds could be simulated with a universal computer, but there are differing opinions about how the computer functions. Fredkin postulates that there is another, extra-universal program that serves at the universal computer's platform, while Oxford theoretical physicist David Deutsch argues that nothing exists outside the computer.

See http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/holytech.html