James P. Crutchfield |
William L. Ditto Harrington Department of Bioengineering Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona 85287-9309 USA |
Sudeshna Sinha Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, Transit Campus, MGSIPAP Complex, Sector 26 Chandigarh 160 019, India |
ABSTRACT: How dynamical systems store and process information is a fundamental question that touches a remarkably wide set of contemporary issues: from the breakdown of Moore's scaling laws—that predicted the inexorable improvement in digital circuitry—to basic philosophical problems of pattern in the natural world. It is a question that also returns one to the earliest days of the foundations of dynamical systems theory, probability theory, mathematical logic, communication theory, and theoretical computer science. We introduce the broad and rather eclectic set of articles in this Focus Issue that highlights a range of current challenges in computing and dynamical systems.