Stuff like this is really fascinating to me because it suggests that computation is an underlying structure in reality. We've found it in sand, gears, marbles, and organisms (and also in that thing between your ears).
We also keep finding ties between computation and mathematics (seriously, read that paper; it's interesting). This might not be as surprising as finding computation in the physical world, but it raises an interesting question. If we use math to reason about reality and computation to help reason about math, how can we build a direct link between reality and computation?