Rule 30 — Clock Counting

AUTHOR NARRATION

Hear the poem.

Read by the author in the original English.

Rule 30English narration

LIVE CELLULAR AUTOMATON

Grow Rule 30—or another rule.

Start with one black cell. Let grow the pattern row by row. Rule 30 is only one of 256 possibilities: try any number from 0 to 255.

RULE NUMBER

Rule 3000011110₂(outputs from 111 to 000)

THE OBJECT IN THE POEM

The pattern found at the beach.

A textile cone shell whose natural pattern resembles the Rule 30 cellular automaton. — 01
**The textile cone**
The natural markings of Conus textile are often compared with the triangular pattern produced by Rule 30.

Charcoal sketch of the Rule 30 shell made by a friend of the author. — 02
**The sketch**
A sketch of the Rule 30 shell drawn for me by my friend S.G.

Photograph: Richard Ling / Wikimedia Commons (GFDL).

THE SUMMER READING LIST

Three books inside the poem.

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas Hofstadter connects mathematics, art, music, and consciousness by tracing recurring patterns across them.

The Music of the Primes

Marcus du Sautoy tells the story of the search for hidden order in the seemingly irregular distribution of prime numbers.

The Unfolding of Language

Guy Deutscher shows how languages accumulate complexity over time without an overall plan or designer.

Covers and bibliographic records: Open Library.

DISCOVERED IN TRANSLATION

I Didn’t Know

This is a genuine mistake I made out of my own ignorance of language when the book was first published—one I discovered while preparing the French translation.

ORIGINAL TEXT

cool as a sunning seel was this bizarre

CORRECTED TEXT

cool as a sunning seal was this bizarre

WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW

I had mixed up the spellings of words I believed were homophones. I knew that a “seal” could be an emblem or impression pressed into wax, as on an envelope, but I mistakenly thought that sense was spelled “seel.” I therefore thought I was creating a deliberate double image: the animal sunning itself and a kind of signet or crest sitting in the sun. In fact, both the animal and the wax impression are spelled “seal.” “Seel” is an unrelated, obscure falconry verb for closing a hawk’s eyes. The wordplay I thought I was constructing was built on a spelling distinction that does not exist.

READER DISCUSSION

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