An Essay on the Origin of Software Evolution

Abstract The biological domain holds interesting keys to the theorists who investigate the root causes of software maintenance. Several authors believe that software systems need to adapt to changing environment the way biological systems do. The objections raised against this generic comparison induced the author to attend additional lessons in biology. Living beings exploit three main forms of adaptation: intelligent, specialist and genetic (or Darwinian). Of these, intelligent adaptation appears to be the most appropriate form to be examined in relation to computational phenomena; besides, it fits with the fundamental ideas of Artificial Intelligence. This study shows how computers are adaptive devices, which aid general systems (companies, production lines, individuals etc.) to have successful behavior in the world. This assumption leads to the inference that the root-causes of software evolution and those of the software itself coincide. Finally, all the factors that affect software maintenance have been surveyed and a measure to handle the software maintenance processes suggested. Index Terms -Nature of software, software changes, intelligent adaptation, information systems, programs classification, software maintenance, management of software projects

From “the dialectics of nature” to the inorganic gene

The concept of projection from one space to another, with a consequent loss of information, can be seen in the relationships of gene to protein and language description to real situation. Such a transformation can only be reversed if extra external information is re-supplied. The genetic algorithm embodying this idea is now used in applied mathematics for exploring a configuration space. Such a dialectic – transformation back and forth between two kinds of description – extends the traditional Hegelian concept used by Engels and others of change as resulting from a resolution of the conflict of two opposing tendencies and provides for evolution of the joint system

Challenges in identifying and interpreting organizational modules in morphology

Form is a rich concept that agglutinates information about the proportions and topological arrangement of body parts. Modularity is readily measurable in both features, the variation of proportions (variational modules) and the organization of topology (organizational modules). The study of variational modularity and of organizational modularity faces similar challenges regarding the identification of meaningful modules and the validation of generative processes; however, most studies in morphology focus solely on variational modularity, while organizational modularity is much less understood. A possible cause for this bias is the successful development in the last twenty years of morphometrics, and specially geometric morphometrics, to study patters of variation. This contrasts with the lack of a similar mathematical framework to deal with patterns of organization. Recently, a new mathematical framework has been proposed to study the organization of gross anatomy using tools from Network Theory, so‐called Anatomical Network Analysis (AnNA). In this essay, I explore the potential use of this new framework—and the challenges it faces in identifying and validating biologically meaningful modules in morphological systems—by providing working examples of a complete analysis of modularity of the human skull and upper limb. Finally, I suggest further directions of research that may bridge the gap between variational and organizational modularity studies, and discuss how alternative modeling strategies of morphological systems using networks can benefit from each other

Complex-Dynamic Origin of Quantised Relativity and Its Manifestations at Higher Complexity Levels

Unified and causal complex-dynamic origin of standard (special and general) relativistic and quantum effects revealed previously at the lowest levels of world interaction dynamics is explicitly generalised to all higher levels of unreduced interaction processes, thus additionally confirming the causally complete character of complex-dynamical, naturally quantised relativity, which does not contain any artificially added, abstract postulates. We demonstrate some elementary applications of this generalised quantum relativity at higher levels of complex brain and social interaction dynamics

Risk evaluation using evolvable discriminate function

This essay proposes a new approach to risk evaluation using disease mathematical modeling. The mathematical model is an algebraic equation of the available database attributes and is used to evaluate the patient condition. If its value is greater than zero it means that the patient is ill (or in risk condition), otherwise healthy. In practice risk evaluation has been a very difficult problem mainly due its sporadic behavior (suddenly, the patient has a stroke, etc as a condition aggravation) and its database representation. The database contains, under the label of risk patient data, information of the patient condition that sometimes is in risk condition and sometimes is not, introducing errors in the algorithm training. The study was applied to Atherosclerosis database from Discovery Challenge 2003 - ECML/PKDD 2003 workshop

The Birth of the Idea of Perfectibility: From the Enlightenment to Transhumanism

Starting from the Age of Enlightenment, a person’s ability of self-improvement, or perfectibility, is usually seen as a fundamental human feature. However, this term, introduced into the philosophical vocabulary by J.-J. Rousseau, gradually acquired additional meaning – largely due to the works of N. de Condorcet, T. Malthus and C. Darwin. Owing to perfectibility, human beings are not only able to work on themselves: by improving their abilities, they are also able to change their environment (both social and natural) and create favorable conditions for their existence. It is no coincidence that perfectibility became the key concept of the idea of social progress proposed by French thinkers in the Age of Enlightenment, despite the fact that later it was criticized, above all, by English authors, who justified its organic and biological nature and gave a different evolutionary interpretation to this concept, without excluding perfectibility from the philosophical vocabulary. In this article, we address the opposition and mutual counterarguments of these two positions. Beyond that, we draw a parallel with some of the ideas of S. Kapitsa, who proved to be not only a critic of Malthusianism but also a direct disciple of Condorcet. In the modern age, the ideas of human self-improvement caused the development of transhumanist movement. Condorcet is more relevant than ever, and today his theory of the progress of the human mind, which influenced the genesis of modern historical science, needs a re-thinking in the newest perspective of improving the mental and physical human nature with the help of modern technologies

The Evolution of Wikipedia's Norm Network

Social norms have traditionally been difficult to quantify. In any particular society, their sheer number and complex interdependencies often limit a system-level analysis. One exception is that of the network of norms that sustain the online Wikipedia community. We study the fifteen-year evolution of this network using the interconnected set of pages that establish, describe, and interpret the community's norms. Despite Wikipedia's reputation for \textit{ad hoc} governance, we find that its normative evolution is highly conservative. The earliest users create norms that both dominate the network and persist over time. These core norms govern both content and interpersonal interactions using abstract principles such as neutrality, verifiability, and assume good faith. As the network grows, norm neighborhoods decouple topologically from each other, while increasing in semantic coherence. Taken together, these results suggest that the evolution of Wikipedia's norm network is akin to bureaucratic systems that predate the information age.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. Matches published version. Data available at http://bit.ly/wiki_nor

Privilege and Property. Essays on the History of Copyright

Copyright law is the site of significant contemporary controversy. In recent years copyright history has transformed as a subject from being one of interest to a few books historians to the focus of sustained historical investigation attracting the attention of scholars from across the humanities. This book comprises a collection of essays on copyright history by leading experts drawn from a range of countries and disciplinary perspectives. Covering the period from 1450 to 1900, these essays engage with a number of related themes. The first considers the general movement, from the sixteenth century onwards, from privilege to property-based conceptions of copyright protection. The second addresses the relationship between the protection provided for literary and print materials and that provided for other forms of cultural production. The third concerns the significance and relevance of these various histories in shaping and informing contemporary policy and academic practice. Essays include: 0. The History of Copyright History, by Kretschmer, Deazley & Bently; 1. From Gunpowder to Print: The Common Origins of Copyright and Patent, by Joanna Kostylo; 2. A Mongrel of early modern copyright: Scotland in European Persepctive, by Alastair Mann; 3. The Public Sphere and the Emergence of Copyright: Areopagitica, the Stationers’ Company, and the Statute of Anne, by Mark Rose; 4. Early American Printing Privileges: the Ambivalent Origins of Authors’ Copyright in America, by Oren Bracha; 5. Author and Work in the French Print Privileges System: Some Milestones, by Laurent Pfister; 6. A Venetian Experiment on Perpetual Copyright, by Maurizio Borghi; 7. Les formalités son mortes, vive les formalities! Copyright formalities in nineteenth century Europe, by Stef van Gompel; 8. The Berlin Publisher Friedrich Nicolai and the reprinting sections of the Prussian Statute Book of 1794, by Friedemann Kawohl; 9. Nineteenth Century Controversies relating to the protection of Artistic Property in France, by Frédéric Rideau; 10. Maps, Views and Ornament. Visualising Property in Art and Law: The Case of pre-modern France, by Katie Scott; 11. Breaking the Mould? The Radical Nature of the Fine Art Copyright Bill 1862, by Ronan Deazley; 12. ‘Neither bolt nor chain, iron safe nor private watchman, can prevent the theft of words’: The birth of the performing right in Britain, by Isabella Alexander; 13. The Return of the Commons: Copyright History as a Common Source, by Karl-Nikolaus Peifer; 14. The Significance of Copyright History for the Publishing History and Historians, by John Feather; 15. Metaphors of Intellectual Property, by William St Clair. The volume is a companion to the digital archive Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): www.copyrighthistory.or