Beginnings

London, late 1970s. A teenager stares at a home-built contraption of wires, graph paper, and a stack of physics books that looks suspiciously taller than he is.

• He’s already publishing young.
• He’s impatient.
• He suspects that computation is more than a mere tool—maybe it’s the fabric.

A postcard arrives: Caltech would like a word. Another whisper arrives from the future: cellular automata can act like tiny universes.

What makes more sense: particle labs or computational worlds?