Today I was lucky in spite of it being Friday the 13th. I spent at least an hour with my sketchbook during lunch. I felt ... what is the word? Creative. There really are few better feelings than having felt productive—especially the kind of productivity that falls under the creative category.
My topic of study was life. Not life as we know it, but the once popular topic of "artificial life." As an undergrad I marveled at the renowned Conway's Game of Life. The problem with this naming of a classical computer science concept is that it conflicts with Hasbro's also famous Game of Life. Hasbro's game came before Conway, and more importantly, the average person knows Hasbro's game much better than Conway's. The board game of life is not different from the game of Monopoly. You have the little physical tokens you use to represent yourself, there's printed fake money, and you get to spin this cool little plastic dial to advance yourself through the game.
In a computer science class, when they start to talk enthusiastically about Conway's Game of Life, you can't help but wonder why they are bringing up a family board game in a serious college lecture? It gets even worse when they start to show you some odd patterns of dots that really excite the lecturer and some of the more sophisticated students. Look! They are alive! Meanwhile average-me is thinking to myself, "I don't see anything alive. Just some pixels moving around on the screen." Furthermore I'm wondering, "Where's the paper money and how much do I get to play with?" Nope. All you've got is living pixels in all of their artificially living glory.
What I remember from Conway's Life is a simplified, stripped-down and pure abstraction of life. If you're lonely, you die. If there's too many people around you, you die too (from overcrowding). If you have just enough friends, then you get to live. And if there are dead things around you, something is born. (This last constraint is the hardest to relate to real life unless you live in some kind of horror film).
During my break today, I came to the conclusion that life can be simplified down to three F's: Food, Fun, Friends. Turns out that words that start with 'F' that relate to life are entirely common, so I suggest you think of the three F's that constitute life for you when you have a free moment.
Ole Kristensen from Denmark writes, "Current medical research shows that both metaphorically and medically family friends and fun is good for the heart. Seems to me that it in the heart of complex science lies simplicity. and it might even be healthy to do what feels best. But, then again I also live in Copenhagen… might be a factor." Copenhagen has one of the best places on earth — Tivoli — so I'm not surprised.
Posted by maeda at May 13, 2005 11:59 PM