| Calculating Space is the title of MITīs English Translation of Konrad Zuseīs book Rechnender Raum (published in Germany in 1969), the first book on digital
physics. Zuse proposed that the universe is being computed on some sort of discrete computing machinery, challenging the
long-held view that some physical laws are continuous by nature. He focused on cellular automata as a possible substrate of the computation, and pointed out (among other things) that
the classical notion of entropy growth does not make sense in deterministically
computed universes.
Bell's theorem is sometimes thought to contradict Zuseīs
hypothesis, but it is not applicable to deterministic universes, as Bell himself has pointed out. Similarly, although Heisenbergīs uncertainty principle says something about the fundamental limitations of an observer trying to
observe the universe in which they are living, the uncertainty principle does not rule out Zuseīs hypothesis, which views the
observer as part of the deterministic process. So far there is no unambiguous physical evidence against the possibility that
everything is just a computation, which is one of the reasons why recent years have seen a resurgence of the field.
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