Browse by:

Agent-Based Computational Sociology

Check out this new book I’ve just come across – Wiley’s lists, across disciplines, is certainly looking very strong these days. Also check out two colleagues’ excellent Wiley offerings – Ted Lewis’ Network Science and of course Ken Aizawa’s and Fred Adams’ The Bounds of Cognition. Agent-based modelCognitionCognitive sciencecomplexityComputational SociologyExtended MindFred AdamsKen AizawaNetwork ScienceSimulationsocial epistemologySocial…

Collective Intelligence 2012

Just under a week until the CI2012 shindig – as it so happens I’m busy co-writing a paper and co-editing a themed issue of Cognitive Systems Research on a species of CI – surprise, surprise “stigmergy.” Artificial intelligenceAustrian SchoolCognitionCollective intelligencecomplexityExtended MindIntelligenceKnowledgeKnowledge ManagementPhilosophy of mindsocial epistemologySocial SciencesSpontaneous orderStigmergyWikipedia

Stigmergy Installation

Check out this installation supported by the Welcome Trust. People walking along Euston Road will encounter an unusually arresting reflection of themselves in a new light installation, ‘Reflex’, created by rAndom International. The work inhabits the windows of the Wellcome Trust as though it were a living organism. Reacting to viewers, passers-by and traffic on…

Stigmergy group

My collaborator Marge Doyle and I have set up a LinkedIn group for the many academic disciplines that now have an interest in stigmergy. Go to LinkedIn and search LinkedIn groups for “stigmergy.”

Swarm Intelligence – free downloads

The publisher of the relatively new journal Swarm Intelligence has made all content freely accessible. I’m not sure how long this offer is good for but it’s an opportunity to sample some of the best work being done in this field. Of course, the editorial board is a “Whose Who” of swarm theorists.

Call for Papers – Stigmergy

Stigmergy – the phenomenon of indirect communication mediated by modifications of the environment – was first conceptualized by zoologist Pierre-Paul Grasse in his ground-breaking work on termite colonies (Grasse 1959). It wasn’t until 1999 that Grasse’s work was brought to a wider audience by Eric Bonabeau et al (1999) in a special issue of Artificial…

Embodiment, Stigmergy, and Swarm Intelligence

Here is a chapter from a book by Michael Dawson, Brian Dupuis, and Michael Wilson (all of the Biological Computation Project, University of Alberta) that has just come my way and is entitled From Bricks to Brains: The Embodied Cognitive Science of LEGO Robots. In fact, all the chapters in draft are freely available to be downloaded…

What is understanding?

Here’s a singularity summit talk by Eric Baum. Baum is known to me as the author of What is Thought? and in particular his discussion of his notion of “The Hayek Machine” as set out in his  “Toward a Model of Intelligence as an Economy of Agents” Machine Learning 35, pp. 155-185 (1999).

The Social Epistemology of Experimental Economics

A new book by Ana Cordeiro dos Santos has come to my attention. Aside from the title which caught my eye – The Social Epistemology of Experimental Economics – what recommends checking the book out is that Ana’s pedigree is notable – her PhD was supervised by Uskali Mäki and Jack Vromen, both top-draw minds…

Alan Turing

The BBC has been running a series of articles on Turing. For those of us who often discuss the conceptual aspects of liberty through the great works of social and political philosophy, we should stop and think about how our liberty was, to a great extent, preserved by Alan Turing. According to Winston Churchill, Turing…