Computation and Information in Physical Systems: A Proposal      

 

"To me, the most interesting thing in the world is how a lot of simple, dumb things can organize themselves into something much more complicated that has behavior on a higher level."
-- Daniel Hillis, in The Third Culture

 

I propose that we survey computation and information in physical systems.  There are many excellent resources both online in books that we may use to this end (see below).

 

The general subject matter includes neural networks, nonlinear dynamical systems, molecular computing, the physical limitations of computing and information, quantum computation, cellular automata, algorithmic information theory, complex adaptive systems and Maxwell’s demon. We may pursue any of topics of common interest to any desired level of depth and this document will change accordingly.

 

A good starting place, it seems to me, is to equip ourselves with the relevant tools: classical theory of computation and information, complexity measures, cellular automata, time series analysis, etc. Feynman Lectures on Computation and Methods and Techniques of Complex Systems Science: An Overview may be sufficient.  Then to the fun stuff!

 

Resources

 

People:

Books: