CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1 Reality Bytes 1
Up and Down the Electronic Gridiron ■ Distant Suns and Planetary Nebula ■ A Gallery of Models ■ Models for All Occasions ■ The Philosopher's Stones ■ Semper Fidelis? ■ The Art of the Model ■ But Can We Trust It? ■ "Hypotheticality" ■ From Real Space to Cyberspace
Chapter 2 Pictures as Programs 37
That's Life? ■ The Genesis Machine ■ The Electronic Abacus ■ The Creative Computer ■ Worlds in Silico ■ The Emergence of "Emergence"
Chapter 3 The Science of Surprise 83
Problems and Paradoxes ■ The Fingerprints of the Complex ■ Illusions of the Mind » A Little Can Be a Lot ■ The Rules of the Game ■ Proofs and Programs ■ The Connections That Count ■ The Laws of Emergence
Chapter 4 Artificial Worlds 131
xiisiana Saturday Afternoon ■ Microworlds, Macrobehaviors-[ow Life Learns to Live ■ Tierra ■ Societies in Silicon ■ gment Calls ■ Building Silicon Worlds
Chapter 5 Reality of the Virtual 183
ide Information ■ The Moral of the Model ■ Limits to entific Knowledge ■ Computation UberAlles ■ Toward a sory of the Complex
References 217
Index 233