From Ephemeralization and Stigmergy to the Global Brain
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Swarms and Swarm Intelligence
SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES homogeneous. Intelligent swarms can also comprise heterogeneous elements Swarms from the outset, reflecting different capabilities as well as a possible social structure. and Swarm Researchers have used agent swarms as a computer modeling tech- nique and as a tool to study complex systems. Simulation examples include Intelligence bird swarms and business, economics, and ecological systems. In swarm sim- Michael G. Hinchey, Loyola College in Maryland ulations, each agent tries to maximize Roy Sterritt, University of Ulster its given parameters. Chris Rouff, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories In terms of bird swarms, each bird tries to find another to fly with, and then flies slightly higher to one side to reduce drag, with the birds eventually forming a flock. Other types of swarm simulations exhibit unlikely emergent behaviors, which are sums of simple Intelligent swarm technologies solve individual behaviors that form com- complex problems that traditional plex and often unexpected behaviors approaches cannot. when aggregated. Swarm intelligence Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang intro- duced the term swarm intelligence in a 1989 article (“Swarm Intelligence,” Proc. 7th Ann. Meeting of the Robotics e are all familiar with working together to achieve a goal Society of Japan, RSJ Press, 1989, pp. swarms in nature. The and produce significant results. 425-428). Swarm intelligence tech- word swarm conjures Swarms may operate on or under the niques (note the difference from intel- up images of large Earth’s surface, under water, or on ligent swarms) are population-based W groups of small insects other planets. stochastic methods used in combina- in which each member performs a torial optimization problems in which simple role, but the action produces SWARMS AND INTELLIGENCE the collective behavior of relatively sim- complex behavior as a whole. -
Global Participatory Acts and the State
STRENGTHENING THE STATE THROUGH DISSENT: GLOBAL PARTICIPATORY ACTS AND THE STATE By Patricia Camilien, université Quisqueya INTRODUCTION In Alvin Toffler‟s Future Shock (1970), three types of men coexist on the planet. Men of the present, living in the here and now as they are carried away by the waves and currents of the world; they are rather vulnerable to "future shock". Men of the past, who have remained in a past time long gone, are living in the twentieth century but are still in the twelfth. Men of the future, informed, insightful and perceptive, who are already surfing on the major trends of tomorrow. In today's world, these men of the future are part of a transnational and nomadic elite helped by the increasing liberalization of trade and the disappearance of borders – at the least for them. Transnational companies like oil brokerage firm Trafigura i – made globally (in) famous in 2010 by a journalist‟s tweet about a file hosted on WikiLeaks – exemplify this (future) global world. They enjoy the best of corporate law around the world and diversify their operations accordingly. This use of different national laws according to the benefits they offer is not limited to transnational corporations and their owners, but now extends to individuals who, while they are not billionaires in dollars, are so in reticular connections. Using global participatory acts (heretofore participactions), they seem to be the ones to help the people move from the present to the future. Moral and social entrepreneurs, they are the vanguard of the future changes in society they are trying to drive through networked actions as relayed by mass self- communication. -
Minding the Body Interacting Socially Through Embodied Action
Linköping Studies in Science and Technology Dissertation No. 1112 Minding the Body Interacting socially through embodied action by Jessica Lindblom Department of Computer and Information Science Linköpings universitet SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden Linköping 2007 © Jessica Lindblom 2007 Cover designed by Christine Olsson ISBN 978-91-85831-48-7 ISSN 0345-7524 Printed by UniTryck, Linköping 2007 Abstract This dissertation clarifies the role and relevance of the body in social interaction and cognition from an embodied cognitive science perspective. Theories of embodied cognition have during the past two decades offered a radical shift in explanations of the human mind, from traditional computationalism which considers cognition in terms of internal symbolic representations and computational processes, to emphasizing the way cognition is shaped by the body and its sensorimotor interaction with the surrounding social and material world. This thesis develops a framework for the embodied nature of social interaction and cognition, which is based on an interdisciplinary approach that ranges historically in time and across different disciplines. It includes work in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, phenomenology, ethology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, linguistics, communication, and gesture studies. The theoretical framework presents a thorough and integrated understanding that supports and explains the embodied nature of social interaction and cognition. It is argued that embodiment is the part and parcel of social interaction and cognition in the most general and specific ways, in which dynamically embodied actions themselves have meaning and agency. The framework is illustrated by empirical work that provides some detailed observational fieldwork on embodied actions captured in three different episodes of spontaneous social interaction in situ. -
Wolf Family Values
Wolf family values The exquisitely balanced social life of the wolf has implications far beyond the pack, says Sharon Levy ORDON HABER was tracking a wolf pack Wolf Project. Despite many thousands of he had known for over 40 years when his hours spent in the field, Haber published G plane crashed on a remote stretch of the little peer-reviewed documentation of his Toklat river in Denali national park, Alaska, work. Now, however, in the months following last October. The fatal accident silenced one his sudden death, Smith and other wolf of the most outspoken and controversial biologists have reported findings that support advocates for wolf protection. Haber, an some of Haber’s ideas. independent biologist, had spent a lifetime Once upon a time, folklore shaped our studying the behaviour and ecology of wolves thinking about wolves. It is only in the past and his passion for the animals was obvious. two decades that biologists have started to “I am still in awe of what I see out there,” he build a clearer picture of wolf ecology (see wrote on his website. “Wolves enliven the “Beyond myth and legend”, page 42). Instead northern mountains, forests, and tundra like of seeing rogue man-eaters and savage packs, no other creature, helping to enrich our stay we now understand that wolves have evolved on the planet simply by their presence as other to live in extended family groups that include Few places remain highly advanced societies in our midst.” a breeding pair – typically two strong, where wolves can live His opposition to hunting was equally experienced individuals – along with several as nature intended intense. -
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen Whose Contribution Was Directed Toward the Integration of Economic Theory with the Principles of Thermo- Dynamics
The Complex History of Sustainability An index of Trends, Authors, Projects and Fiction Amir Djalali with Piet Vollaard Made for Volume magazine as a follow-up of issue 18, After Zero. See the timeline here: archis.org/history-of-sustainability Made with LATEX Contents Introduction 7 Bibliography on the history of sustainability 9 I Projects 11 II Trends 25 III Fiction 39 IV People, Events and Organizations 57 3 4 Table of Contents Introduction Speaking about the environment today apparently means speaking about Sustainability. Theoretically, no one can take a stand against Sustain- ability because there is no definition of it. Neither is there a history of Sustainability. The S-word seems to point to a universal idea, valid any- where, at any time. Although the notion of Sustainability appeared for the first time in Germany in the 18th century (as Nachhaltigkeit), in fact Sustainability (and the creative oxymoron ’Sustainable Development’) isa young con- cept. Developed in the early seventies, it was formalized and officially adopted by the international community in 1987 in the UN report ’Our Common Future’. Looking back, we see that Western society has always been obsessed by its relationship with the environment, with what is meant to be outside ourselves, or, as some call it, nature. Many ideas preceded the notion of Sustainability and even today there are various trends and original ideas following old ideological traditions. Some of these directly oppose Sustainability. This timeline is a subjective attempt to historically map the different ideas around the relationship between humans and their environment. 5 6 Introduction Some earlier attempts to put the notion of sustainability in a historical perspective Ulrich Grober, Deep roots. -
Markets Not Capitalism Explores the Gap Between Radically Freed Markets and the Capitalist-Controlled Markets That Prevail Today
individualist anarchism against bosses, inequality, corporate power, and structural poverty Edited by Gary Chartier & Charles W. Johnson Individualist anarchists believe in mutual exchange, not economic privilege. They believe in freed markets, not capitalism. They defend a distinctive response to the challenges of ending global capitalism and achieving social justice: eliminate the political privileges that prop up capitalists. Massive concentrations of wealth, rigid economic hierarchies, and unsustainable modes of production are not the results of the market form, but of markets deformed and rigged by a network of state-secured controls and privileges to the business class. Markets Not Capitalism explores the gap between radically freed markets and the capitalist-controlled markets that prevail today. It explains how liberating market exchange from state capitalist privilege can abolish structural poverty, help working people take control over the conditions of their labor, and redistribute wealth and social power. Featuring discussions of socialism, capitalism, markets, ownership, labor struggle, grassroots privatization, intellectual property, health care, racism, sexism, and environmental issues, this unique collection brings together classic essays by Cleyre, and such contemporary innovators as Kevin Carson and Roderick Long. It introduces an eye-opening approach to radical social thought, rooted equally in libertarian socialism and market anarchism. “We on the left need a good shake to get us thinking, and these arguments for market anarchism do the job in lively and thoughtful fashion.” – Alexander Cockburn, editor and publisher, Counterpunch “Anarchy is not chaos; nor is it violence. This rich and provocative gathering of essays by anarchists past and present imagines society unburdened by state, markets un-warped by capitalism. -
Globalized Digital Networks and Horizontal Information Processing
In Situ Issue 1 In Situ 2009 Article 10 5-2009 Globalization’s Effect on Human Information Processing: Globalized Digital Networks and Horizontal Information Processing Tony Wang University of Pennsylvania This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/insitu/vol1/iss1/10 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Globalization’s Effect on Human Information Processing: Globalized Digital Networks and Horizontal Information Processing This article is available in In Situ: https://repository.upenn.edu/insitu/vol1/iss1/10 Wang: Globalization’s Effect on Human Information Processing: Globalize Globalization’s Effect on Human Information Processing: Globalized Digital Networks and Horizontal Information Processing Tony Wang Introduction In July of 2008, Nicolas Carr of the Atlantic wrote an influential article entitled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The predominant consideration of this ironically long article is the “deterioration” of human information processing caused by growth of information technology. The main culprit responsible for this downward trend is the Net, whose operating philosophy mandates the continual expansion of information accessibility, the reducibility of information to small bits, and the encouragement of constant consumption and generation of information. The epitome of this operating philosophy is Twitter, an extremely popular social networking website whose entire premise is based on users submitting updates about their life of no more than 140 characters (this sentence is longer than 140 characters). In true McLuhan style, Carr contends that the Net “remaps” our neural circuitry to emulate the very medium with which we access information. We are able to process more information in a shorter amount of time, but at the cost of being prevented from focusing on long pieces of prose for sustained periods of time: “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy…. -
Toward a New Science of Information
Data Science Journal, Volume 6, Supplement, 7 April 2007 TOWARD A NEW SCIENCE OF INFORMATION D Doucette1*, R Bichler 2, W Hofkirchner2, and C Raffl2 *1 The Science of Information Institute, 1737 Q Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009, USA Email: [email protected] 2 ICT&S Center, University of Salzburg - Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society, Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 18, 5020 Salzburg, Austria Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT The concept of information has become a crucial topic in several emerging scientific disciplines, as well as in organizations, in companies and in everyday life. Hence it is legitimate to speak of the so-called information society; but a scientific understanding of the Information Age has not had time to develop. Following this evolution we face the need of a new transdisciplinary understanding of information, encompassing many academic disciplines and new fields of interest. Therefore a Science of Information is required. The goal of this paper is to discuss the aims, the scope, and the tools of a Science of Information. Furthermore we describe the new Science of Information Institute (SOII), which will be established as an international and transdisciplinary organization that takes into consideration a larger perspective of information. Keywords: Information, Science of Information, Information Society, Transdisciplinarity, Science of Information Institute (SOII), Foundations of Information Science (FIS) 1 INTRODUCTION Information is emerging as a new and large prospective area of study. The notion of information has become a crucial topic in several emerging scientific disciplines such as Philosophy of Information, Quantum Information, Bioinformatics and Biosemiotics, Theory of Mind, Systems Theory, Internet Research, and many more. -
A New Transdisciplinary Paradigm for the Study of Complex Systems?", In: Self-Steering and Cognition in Complex Systems, Heylighen F., Rosseel E
Heylighen F. (1990): "A New Transdisciplinary Paradigm for the Study of Complex Systems?", in: Self-Steering and Cognition in Complex Systems, Heylighen F., Rosseel E. & Demeyere F. (ed.), (Gordon and Breach, New York), p. 1-16. A NEW TRANSDISCIPLINARY PARADIGM FOR THE STUDY OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS? Francis Heylighen Transdisciplinary Research Group Free University of Brussels ABSTRACT: two paradigms for studying the relation between autonomy and cognition are reviewed and contrasted: the "artificial" paradigm, which sees autonomous systems as linear, information-processing organizations, and the "autopoietic" paradigm, which sees them as circular, self-producing organizations. It is argued that these two paradigms are not inconsistent but complementary, and that they can be synthesized in an encompassing paradigm based on the self-organization of complex systems through variation-and-selective retention, leading to the emergence of relatively autonomous subsystems. Some implications of such an encompassing paradigm on the level of science, technology, individual persons and society are outlined, with reference to the papers in this collection. It is argued that the further development of such a transdisciplinary approach will lead to a new "science of complexity". 1. Introduction In the preface to this book it was argued that some recent trends in different disciplines seem to converge around the concepts of self-organization, autonomy and cognition. Whether these developments really announce the emergence of a new paradigm remains to be proven. Only time can tell. In this position paper, I will assume that they do, and investigate where this new paradigm would be coming from, and where it might be heading to. -
Artificial Intelligence
Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and Wisdom in the Global Sustainable Information Society Fourth International Conference on Philosophy of Information, IS4SI Summit Berkeley 2019, UC Berkeley, 2-6 June 2019 Wolfgang Hofkirchner Director, GSIS – The Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society, Vienna Contents 1 A complex systems view 1.1 The Great Bifurcation 1.2 The Transformation into a Global Sustainable Information Society 2 Conditions for thriving and surviving 2.1 Globality 2.2 Sustainability 2.3 Informationality 3 Intelligence, AI, and wisdom 1 A complex systems view Seen from a complex systems view, the evolution of mankind faces a Great Bifurcation. Global challenges might cause the extermination of mankind. At the same time, global challenges can be mastered through a transformation into a global sustainable information society. 1.1 The Great Bifurcation Civilisation at the breakthrough to a higher level crossroads (rise of complexity): integration of differentiated, interdependent social systems into a single meta-/suprasystem – Global Sustainable Information global space of possible Society challenges trajectories (multicrisis in all techno-, eco-, social breakdown (decline of complexity): subsystems) impossible trajectories disintegration and tipping point* falling apart of civilisation * Ervin László 1.2 Transformation Metasystem transition* agency system n interacting agency (proto-element) (network) * Francis Heylighen et al. system n+1 (proto-element) 1.2 Transformation Metasystem …organisational transition -
Arxiv:Nlin/0610040V2 [Nlin.AO] 27 Nov 2012
Self-organizing Traffic Lights: A Realistic Simulation Seung-Bae Cools, Carlos Gershenson, and Bart D’Hooghe 1 Introduction: Catch the Green Wave? Better Make Your Own! Everybody in populated areas suffers from traffic congestion problems. To deal with them, different methods have been developed to mediate between road users as best as possible. Traffic lights are not the only pieces in this puzzle, but they are an important one. As such, different approaches have been used trying to reduce waiting times of users and to prevent traffic jams. The most common consists of finding the appropriate phases and periods of traffic lights to quantitatively optimize traffic flow. This results in “green waves” that flow through the main avenues of a city, ideally enabling cars to drive through them without facing a red light, as the speed of the green wave matches the desired cruise speed for the avenue. However, this approach does not consider the current state of the traffic. If there is a high traffic density, cars entering a green wave will be stopped by cars ahead of them or cars that turned into the avenue, and once a car misses the green wave, it will have to wait the whole duration of the red light to enter the next green wave. On the other hand, for very low densities, cars might arrive too quickly at the next intersection, having to stop at each crossing. This method is certainly better than having no synchronization at all, however, it can be greatly improved. Traffic modelling has enhanced greatly our understanding of this complex phe- nomenon, especially during the last decade (Prigogine and Herman 1971; Wolf et al. -
An Exploration in Stigmergy-Based Navigation Algorithms
From Ants to Service Robots: an Exploration in Stigmergy-Based Navigation Algorithms عمر بهر تيری محبت ميری خدمت گر رہی ميں تری خدمت کےقابل جب هوا توچل بسی )اقبال( To my late parents with love and eternal appreciation, whom I lost during my PhD studies Örebro Studies in Technology 79 ALI ABDUL KHALIQ From Ants to Service Robots: an Exploration in Stigmergy-Based Navigation Algorithms © Ali Abdul Khaliq, 2018 Title: From Ants to Service Robots: an Exploration in Stigmergy-Based Navigation Algorithms Publisher: Örebro University 2018 www.publications.oru.se Print: Örebro University, Repro 05/2018 ISSN 1650-8580 ISBN 978-91-7529-253-3 Abstract Ali Abdul Khaliq (2018): From Ants to Service Robots: an Exploration in Stigmergy-Based Navigation Algorithms. Örebro Studies in Technology 79. Navigation is a core functionality of mobile robots. To navigate autonomously, a mobile robot typically relies on internal maps, self-localization, and path plan- ning. Reliable navigation usually comes at the cost of expensive sensors and often requires significant computational overhead. Many insects in nature perform robust, close-to-optimal goal directed naviga- tion without having the luxury of sophisticated sensors, powerful computational resources, or even an internally stored map. They do so by exploiting a simple but powerful principle called stigmergy: they use their environment as an external memory to store, read and share information. In this thesis, we explore the use of stigmergy as an alternative route to realize autonomous navigation in practical robotic systems. In our approach, we realize a stigmergic medium using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology by embedding a grid of read-write RFID tags in the floor.