I've sometimes thought it might be reasonable to think of a single cell in the system as an 'automaton' which might make it somewhat ok to call the whole collection of cells 'automata'.

I accept that there's two levels here though and sometimes people refer to the system as a whole as being a single automaton even if there's loads of cells.

I was considering posting this, but then I realised the hypocrisy in my use of the word "data" :)

The post describes multiple automata though?

Yes it does. Even discarding arguments that different rules in the same class are the same automaton and multiple cells are the same automaton, the article includes reversible and non-reversible automata which are distinct classes.

  >multiple automata

Automatia