As an example, look at WolframPhysics.org as a computational model for theoretical physics. It assumes even an even smaller scale of "things" than 10^-35 meter Planck length. As an exercise in Mathematics, Wolfram supposes the universe is simply a set of 'space points' at perhaps 10^-100 meter. Reality, the universe, as we is know it could be on order of of 10^400 of these much smaller space points.
But instead of these points being arranged in a regular grid, they are arranged by how they are related in other ways determined by rewrite rules. For example, explicit "causation" rules applying to 'causation' edges in space.
Spacetime here is an emergent property, but time only 'goes forward' because as the rewrite rules apply, space itself changes. Out of a universe where space and time are entirely different, he computes a universe where there is spacetime mathematics.
Wolfram's project has been demonstrating this underlying 'even smaller than Planck Length world can and does provide a means to derive both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.'
Wolfram created Mathematica and is wealthy. His project is self-funded which basically means he decided to make all his work, and the others pursuing a computational approach to explanation in Physics, public. So, for example, anyone can join his weekly project meetings to monitor their mathematical progress on this new way of thinking about unification in the standard model.
While Wolfram has been thinking about computational explanations for a long time, only in the last few years has his group proposed to have achieved this derivation of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics based on a much simpler model of the universe where time and space are entirely distinct and closer to our intuition...assuming you are believe the universe is a graph of space points with (a small number) of rewrite rules modifying this graph inexorably, and non-reversibly, into the future.
As a computational neuroscientist I find his theory more fun because it could connect how the human brain knows reality (decidedly computational) with how reality 'actually' works. I have long believed (as a matter of faith) that the human mind is the only 'reality' ... As Descartes suggested : "I think therefore I am." Here is the case for that view:
