LIFEPAGE was developed as a link to information about the game of "Life," LIFELINE, useful on-line Life resources, and in the near future, puzzles and mathematical games.
The game of Life ("Life") involves forms built out of simple birth and death rules which a computer puts through a series of rapid transformations. Invented by John Horton Conway, Life has captured the interest of computer scientists around the globe. Life is based on cellular automata theory and uses a two-dimensional square space which is simply a matrix or grid. Each square or cell within this grid has two possible states: either empty or full (that is, occupied with a "bit"). Each cell has a set of eight surrounding neighbor cells that can influence its own state. A cell's state will change according to a set of transition rules that apply simultaneously to every cell in the space. These rules are based on both the current state of the cell and also the collective state of its neighbors and need only consider and be defined for a cell going from empty to full (birth) or from full to empty (death).
Conway's specific rules are the key to Life; he took several years to select his rules with great care to avoid two extremes: patterns that grow too quickly without limit and patterns where many would fade away. By striking a delicate balance he constructed a model of surprising unpredictability and one that produced an incredible variety of activity.
Although the rules of the game are uncomplicated, highly complex "life forms" may arise from simple starting patterns (perhaps not unlike life itself). In fact, it has been shown that in Life there exists the possibility of self moving phenomena with the ability to duplicate themselves, to reproduce. Further, it has been suggested that the universe itself is a space-time granular and that the future although completely deterministic is unpredictable, being its own fastest simulation!
In the early seventies, the only references to Conway's work were those originally given in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column in the October 1970 and February 1971 issues of Scientific American. Many readers (the writer included) expressed an interest in developing a method by which they could continue to exchange new developments (prior to the days of newsgroups and e-mail!). My investment of time and effort motivated me to establish the newsletter "LIFELINE."
LIFELINE, published from March 1971 through September 1973, was a quarterly newsletter created for enthsiasts of John Horton Conway's gameof "Life." LIFELINE continues to this day to be a much utilized reference to the game in part due to the coverage it received through William Poundstone's "The Recursive Universe" and Omni magazine (as well as word of mouth).