Several months ago I floated the idea of compiling a database for all things “stigmergical”. I’m pleased to say that Simon Garnier has come up with a much better conceived idea (and database platform) for all things SWARM (which includes stigmergy). This is a timely project since the literature has of late witnessed an exponential increase in…
Some four months ago I commented on how swarm behavior is entering the public consciousness. Well there is an article in yesterday’s the science section of the New York Times that continues this trend. But if you want a really good recent article on swarm intelligence, I would refer you to the paper “The biological principles…
A copy of my review of Andy Clark’s Natural-Born Cyborgs is now available through MindPapers.
My recent co-authored paper now available to download through MindPapers. The abstract: To know is to cognize, to cognize is to be a culturally bounded, rationality-bounded and environmentally located agent. Knowledge and cognition are thus dual aspects of human sociality. If social epistemology has the formation, acquisition, mediation, transmission and dissemination of knowledge in complex…
A journalistic take on what is essentially active externalism or the thesis of the extended mind. David Brooks (yes, THAT David Brooks) implicitly refers to notions of collaborative filtering, swarming, stigmergy, and even memetics. Of course, one suspects that Brooks has only the slighest conceptual inkling of what’s going on. Notions of the extended mind enjoy currency both in academic and popular literature: the ‘‘global…
The September 7th issue of Science is a special issue devoted to social cognition: the table of contents found here. I reproduce the introduction “Living in Societies” by Caroline Ash, Gilbert Chin, Elizabeth Pennisi and Andrew Sugden. The appearance of this issue has prompted me to post the introduction to the special issue of social cognition…
I came across this great poster for the Insectes sociaux 2007 Colloque Section Française UIEIS held this past September. As conference posters go, this is the most dramatic I’ve certainly come across – click thumbnail to view larger version (if you’ve got Explorer 7, the magnification function in the bottom right corner blows it up nicely). What an exciting…
Thanks to the stigmergic properties of the Web I am thrilled to make the acquaintance of Vitorino Ramos of the Evolutionary Systems and Biomedical Engineering Lab., IST, Technical University of Lisbon. For those interested in all things related to Artificial Life and Intelligence, Bio-Inspired Computation, Collective Intelligence and Complex Systems, Evolution, Self-Organization and emergent Cognitive Learning,…
Dennett on top form: Can we know our own minds? (23 minutes) ==================================== 1. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (60 minutes) 2. The Magic of Consciousness (56 minutes) The following readings are highly relevant to the Extended Mind and stigmergy literature 3. Kind of Minds Pt 1 What Kinds of Minds Are There? (37 minutes) 4. Kinds…
I’d like to plug a book co-authored by a correspondent of mine, Lila Rajiva. The subject matter should have some appeal to swarm theorists and others interested in complexity theory be they economists or political theorists. Lila Rajiva offers the following outline of the book’s subject matter. ============================================ Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets (Bill Bonner and…
manwithoutqualities 