Speculations II Zuse

The answer that Zuse offers to the first question is to use irregularly organized lattices (recall T.D. Lee s random lattice field theory ([tdlee85a] section 12.5.3) and Ilachinski s speculative reasons for developing his SDCA model ([ilach87] see section 8.8)  

In this scheme, digital particles are still wandering localized clusters of informa-tionl but (conventional) variables such as space, time, velocity and so on become statistical quantities. Given that no experimental measurement to date has yet detected any statistical dispersion in the velocity of light, the sites of a hypothetical discrete underlying lattice can be no further apart than about 10 cm. 

Though there was of course no way for Zuse to answer his second question (nor is there any way today), the fact that it is being asked at all underscores the essence of the second of the two paradigm shifts listed earlier in this chapter the notion that information is more fundamental than what have traditionally been used as fundamental variables (mass, energy, etc.). Zuse suggests that if only we could find an appropriate language or formalism with which to describe this primordial information, we would find, for example, that the information content of two or more interacting particles is conserved. 

A strong proponent of the view that the universe is literally a CA is Edward Fred-kin (see [fredkin82], [fredkinQO] and [fredkin93]). In two of his most recent papers, Digital Mechanics [fredkinQO] and A New Cosmogony [fredkin93], Fredkin explores some of the consequences of making what he calls the finite nature hypothesis  

Fredkin s finite nature hypothesis makes no assumptions about the actual scale of space-time s discretization. It might be as large as current estimates of the 

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