Emergence of Macro Spatial Structures in Dissipative Cellular Automata

This paper describes the peculiar behavior observed in a class of cellular automata that we have defined as dissipative, i.e., cellular automata that are open and makes it possible for the environment to influence their evolution. Peculiar in the dynamic evolution of this class of cellular automata is that stable macro-level spatial structures emerge from local interactions among cells, a behavior that does not emerge when the cellular automaton is closed, i.e., when the state of a cell is not influenced by the external world. Moreover, we observed that Dissipative Cellular Automata (DCA) exhibit a behavior very similar to that of dissipative structures, as macro-level spatial structures emerge as soon as the external perturbation exceeds a threshold value and it stays below the “turbulence” limit. Finally, we discuss possible relations of the performed experiments with the area of open distributed computing, and in particular of agent-based distributed computing.