POST-APOCALYPTIC COMPUTING

An apocalyptic event reverses civilisation's control over nature. Instead, civilisation is placed under the control of nature. The domains of science and engineering that will adapt to a post-apocalyptic world are those whose status was marginal in the former civilisation. In this edited volume, we have invited specialists from various fields (computer scientists, chemists, mathematicians, engineers, biologists, physicists and philosophers) to share their insights on how information acquisition, information processing, decision-making, and reasoning might evolve after apocalyptic events, with the aim of shaping the design of the next von Neumann generation of computers.

The book explores diverse topics such as the theory of computation, eternity of civilisations, computable knowledge, analog computation, bio-inspired fault tolerance, reversible cellular automata, catastrophe theory and the collapse of complex systems, bio-inspired soft robots, computing with exotic substrates (like clocks, stones and sticks, fluids, slime moulds, minimal resources), decomposition of meanings, collective computing, biological computing, neo-sentience, parallel algorithms and the metaphysics of the apocalypse.

Contents:

• Preface
• About the Editor
• The Clock of the Apocalypse: The Rhythms of Life and the Ending of Time (José Félix Costa and Paula Gouveia)
• What to Compute Before an Apocalypse: Knowledge as Cryptocurrency at the End of Civilisation (Hector Zenil)
• Evolutionary Techniques in Analyzing Thom's Catastrophes: Insights into Complex System Collapses (Ivan Zelinka)
• Computing with Stones and Sticks (Jerzy Gorecki)
• Computing without Electronics (Andrew Adamatzky)
• Post-Apocalyptic Computing and Technology Towards Computing from Natural Colloids and Micro-Fragments (A Chiolerio, M Crepaldi, D Torazza, N Raeisi Kheirabadi, and A Adamatzky)
• Analog Computation after Apocalypsis (Bernd Ulmann)
• Computing with Clocks (Jonathan Edwards, Alex Yakovlev, and Simon O'Keefe)
• Bio-inspired Fault-tolerance in Electronic Systems (Martin Albrecht Trefzer)
• Before and After Big Crunch in a Reversible Discrete Cellular Universe (Kenichi Morita)
• Post-Apocalyptic Computing from Cellular Automata (Genaro J Martínez, Andrew Adamatzky, and Guanrong Chen)
• Smoke Signals to Silicon: Unravelling the Threads of Emerging Computing Paradigms (Ioannis K Chatzipaschalis, Iosif-Angelos Fyrigos, and Georgios Ch Sirakoulis)
• Towards Computational Apocalypse: Computing with Minimal Resources and Earth-Abundant Materials (Lulu Alluhaibi, Pier Luigi Gentili, Wiktor Głąb, Ewelina Kowalewska, Sébastien Pecqueur, Kapela Pilaka, Anurag Pritam, Andrzej Sławek, and Konrad Szaciłowski)
• Challenges of Unconventional Computing: A Personal Perspective (Gari Owen)
• Self-decomputing: The Lack of Meaning Among Information (Jordi Vallverdú)
• A Metaphysical Approach to the Apocalypse to Come (Catarina Pombo Nabais)
• Listen (Hilary Ritz, Esteban Montero, Flora Moon, and Brandon Baylor)
• The Buddha and Biomass (Andrew Schumann)
• Neosentience Production and a Set of Conversations with ChatGPT Exploring Speculative Post-Apocalyptic Questions (Bill Seaman)
• Doomsday Machines Computer and Computing in Cold-War Science Fiction (Stefan Höltgen)
• Always Already Post-Apocalyptic: On the History of Computing (Jens Schröter)

Readership: Primary: Computer architects, system developers; Secondary: Popular computing-interested public.