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ANKOS was in fact mentioned already, a couple of hours ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11982034

Although Shalizi has his own biases and is pretty opinionated, his review of "A New Kind of Science" is quite interesting and is worth considering: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/

I second the recommendation with the caveat that you can only get through it if you can stand his narcissism.

It's really a tragedy because there really are brilliant ideas in there. It's just that Wolfram did not single handedly invent them all.

I would also recommend the Artificial Life conference proceedings and journals.

I don't think he quite claims that he single handedly invented them all, but yes, Wolfram's style is pointedly awful. I'm surprised I was open-minded enough to get to the good parts of the book... The surprising existence of the cone-shell pattern alone made it worth it.