The multicomputational paradigm is a generalization of the computational paradigm to many computational threads of time. In the ordinary computational paradigm, time effectively progresses in a linear way corresponding to the successive computation of the next state of the system from the previous one. In contrast, in the multicomputational paradigm every possible path through a computation proceeds through a different interwoven thread of time.
In other words, the mathematical paradigm treats treats time as a mathematical variable whose value can be arbitrarily chosen, the computational paradigm treats time as a reflection of the progress of a computation, and the multicomputational paradigm treats time as multithreaded, thus reflecting an interwoven progression of multiple threads of computation. As shown schematically above, the multicomputational paradigm can be viewed as a new fourth paradigm for doing theoretical science, supplanting the structural, mathematical, and computational paradigms (Wolfram 2021a).
Multicomputation and the multicomputational paradigm are one of the core ideas of the Wolfram Physics Project (Wolfram 2021a).
