1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first
introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific American, October
1970); the game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on
which it could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the
cells by hand. Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with
it, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the
mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT,
who even implemented life in {TECO}!). When a hacker mentions `life',
he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the
breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. Many web resources
are available starting from the Open Directory page of Life. The Life
Lexicon is a good indicator of what makes the game so fascinating.
[glider.png]
A glider, possibly the best known of the quasi-organic phenomena in
the Game of Life.
2. The opposite of {Usenet}. As in "{Get a life!}"
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {blinkenlights}{chemist}{replicator}]