I gave a talk at the Wolfram Technology Conference 2025 on Wireworld — a 2D cellular automaton created by Brian Silverman in 1984, with just four states, yet powerful enough to build a real computer. I have the pleasure of talking with Brian regularly, which was a big part of what inspired this exploration.

The talk walks through the rules, shows how “electrons” propagate, and builds up logic gates, adders, memory, and control circuits — all in Wolfram Language — culminating in a complete working computer.

The community post covers Part 1 of what will be a multi-part series — Parts 2 and 3 are still in the works, so stay tuned.