Complexity through the Observation of Simple Systems

We survey work on the paradigm called “computing by observing.” Its central feature is that one considers the behavior of an evolving system as the result of a computation. To this end an observer records this behavior. It has turned out that the observed behavior of computationally simple systems can be very complex, when an appropriate observer is used. For example, a restricted version of context-free grammars with regular observers suffices to obtain computational completeness. As a second instantiation presented here, we apply an observer to sticker systems. Finally, some directions for further research are proposed.