Trajectories in Physical Space out of Communications in Acquaintance Space: An Agent-Based Model of a Textile Industrial District

This article presents an agent-based model of an Italian textile district where thousands of small firms specialize in particular phases of fabrics production. It is an empirical and methodological model that reconstructs the communications between firms when they arrange production chains. In their turn, production chains reflect into road traffic in the geographical areas where the district extends. The reconstructed traffic exhibits a pattern that has been observed, but not foreseen, by policy makers

Trajectories in Physical Space out of Communications in Acquaintance Space: An Agent-Based Model of a Textile Industrial District

This article presents an agent-based model of an Italian textile district where thousands of small firms specialize in particular phases of fabrics production. It is an empirical and methodological model that reconstructs the communications between firms when they arrange production chains. In their turn, production chains reflect into road traffic in the geographical areas where the district extends. The reconstructed traffic exhibits a pattern that has been observed, but not foreseen, by policy makers.Time-Geography, Agent-Based Models, Prato

Non-determinism in the narrative structure of video games

PhD ThesisAt the present time, computer games represent a finite interactive system. Even in their more experimental forms, the number of possible interactions between player and NPCs (non-player characters) and among NPCs and the game world has a finite number and is led by a deterministic system in which events can therefore be predicted. This implies that the story itself, seen as the series of events that will unfold during gameplay, is a closed system that can be predicted a priori. This study looks beyond this limitation, and identifies the elements needed for the emergence of a non-finite, emergent narrative structure. Two major contributions are offered through this research. The first contribution comes in the form of a clear categorization of the narrative structures embracing all video game production since the inception of the medium. In order to look for ways to generate a non-deterministic narrative in games, it is necessary to first gain a clear understanding of the current narrative structures implemented and how their impact on users’ experiencing of the story. While many studies have observed the storytelling aspect, no attempt has been made to systematically distinguish among the different ways designers decide how stories are told in games. The second contribution is guided by the following research question: Is it possible to incorporate non-determinism into the narrative structure of computer games? The hypothesis offered is that non-determinism can be incorporated by means of nonlinear dynamical systems in general and Cellular Automata in particular

Inductive Pattern Formation

With the extended computational limits of algorithmic recursion, scientific investigation is transitioning away from computationally decidable problems and beginning to address computationally undecidable complexity. The analysis of deductive inference in structure-property models are yielding to the synthesis of inductive inference in process-structure simulations. Process-structure modeling has examined external order parameters of inductive pattern formation, but investigation of the internal order parameters of self-organization have been hampered by the lack of a mathematical formalism with the ability to quantitatively define a specific configuration of points. This investigation addressed this issue of quantitative synthesis. Local space was developed by the Poincare inflation of a set of points to construct neighborhood intersections, defining topological distance and introducing situated Boolean topology as a local replacement for point-set topology. Parallel development of the local semi-metric topological space, the local semi-metric probability space, and the local metric space of a set of points provides a triangulation of connectivity measures to define the quantitative architectural identity of a configuration and structure independent axes of a structural configuration space. The recursive sequence of intersections constructs a probabilistic discrete spacetime model of interacting fields to define the internal order parameters of self-organization, with order parameters external to the configuration modeled by adjusting the morphological parameters of individual neighborhoods and the interplay of excitatory and inhibitory point sets. The evolutionary trajectory of a configuration maps the development of specific hierarchical structure that is emergent from a specific set of initial conditions, with nested boundaries signaling the nonlinear properties of local causative configurations. This exploration of architectural configuration space concluded with initial process-structure-property models of deductive and inductive inference spaces. In the computationally undecidable problem of human niche construction, an adaptive-inductive pattern formation model with predictive control organized the bipartite recursion between an information structure and its physical expression as hierarchical ensembles of artificial neural network-like structures. The union of architectural identity and bipartite recursion generates a predictive structural model of an evolutionary design process, offering an alternative to the limitations of cognitive descriptive modeling. The low computational complexity of these models enable them to be embedded in physical constructions to create the artificial life forms of a real-time autonomously adaptive human habitat

Law and Policy for the Quantum Age

Law and Policy for the Quantum Age is for readers interested in the political and business strategies underlying quantum sensing, computing, and communication. This work explains how these quantum technologies work, future national defense and legal landscapes for nations interested in strategic advantage, and paths to profit for companies

Engineering humans : cultural history of the science and technology of human enhancement

This thesis investigates the technological imaginary of human enhancement: how it has been conceived historically and the scientific understanding that has shaped it. Human enhancement technologies have been prominent in popular culture narratives for a long time, but in the past twenty years they have moved out of science fiction to being an issue for serious discussion, in academic disciplines, political debate and the mass media.. Even so, the bioethical debate on enhancement, whether it is pharmacological means of improving cognition and morality or genetic engineering to create smarter people or other possibilities, is consistently centred on technologies that do not yet exist. The investigation is divided into three main areas: a chapter on eugenics, two chapters on cybernetics and the cyborg, and two chapters on transhumanism. All three areas of enhancement thinking have a corresponding understanding of and reference to evolutionary theory and the human as a category. Insofar as ‘enhancement’ is a vague and relative turn, the chapters show how each approach wrestles with how to formulate what is good and desirable. When this has inevitably proven difficult, the technologies themselves dictate what and how ‘enhancement’ comes about. Eugenics treats the human in terms of populations – as a species, but also in abstract categories such as nation and race. I follow the establishment of eugenics from the development of a statistical understanding of measuring human aptitude, with emphasis on the work of Francis Galton and the formulation of the regression to the mean. The following two chapters on cybernetics and the cyborg analyses how the metaphor of the body as machine has changed relative to what is meant by ‘machine’: associated with Cartesian dualism, cybernetics marked a shift in how we understand the term. Through a reading of the original formulation of the cyborg, I connect it to evolutionary adaptationism and a cybernetic ‘black box’ approach. The last two chapters look at a more recent approach to enhancement as a moral imperative, transhumanism. Since some transhumanists seek to ground themselves philosophically as the inheritors to Enlightenment humanism, the concept of ‘morphological freedom’ is central, representing an extension of humanistic principles of liberty brought into an age which privileges information over matter. The final chapter looks at how the privileging of information leads to a universal computational ontology, and I specifically look at the work of Ray Kurzweil, a prominent transhumanist, and how the computationalist narrative creates a teleological understanding of both human worth and evolution

Distant Electric Vision: Cultural Representations Of Television From “Edison’s Telephonoscope” To The Electronic Screen

Do inventions that exist only on paper have less credibility than functional technologies? How has the meaning and significance of audiovisual media and technology changed over time? This dissertation examines historiography and methodology for media history, arguing for an interdisciplinary approach. It addresses methodological issues in media history—media in transition, media archaeology, and film history—through an examination of television’s speculative era. It tackles moving-image history through an historical investigation of Victorian and Machine age “television”. Because the concept and terminology of “television” changed dramatically during this period, I use the phrases “distant electric vision” and “seeing by electricity,” to define the concept of electric and electronic moving-image technology. By identifying manifestations of “television” before functional models existed, this dissertation examines the ways in which a modern concept of moving-image technology came into existence. Engineers and inventors, as well as audiences and journalists contributed to the construction of “television.” Newspaper announcements, editorial columns, letters to the editor, rumors and satires circulated. Victorian-era readers, writers and inventors pictured “seeing by electricity” to do for the eye what the telephone had done for the ear, bringing people closer together though separated by great distances. In contrast, early twentieth-century Machine-age engineers placed more emphasis on systems, communication, design, and picture quality. Developments in the 1920s with complex systems and electronics made “distant electric vision” a reality. This dissertation identifies several shifts that took place during television’s speculative era from the Victorian “annihilation of space” to Machine-Age systems engineering. Journalists, readers, and engineers all play a part in the rhetoric of innovation. From the Victorian era to the Machine age, the educational function of popular science and the role of audiences in constructing meaning and value for new technologies remain relatively consistent. I offer several case studies, including Thomas Edison’s inventions, illuminating engineering, and Bell Labs experiments with television. This dissertation argues that modern television design relies on the ability of the technology to make an unnatural experience seem as effortless as possible. Ultimately, it advocates for an expanded definition of media and technology, along with an historical emphasis on context

Information processing in biology

To survive, organisms must respond appropriately to a variety of challenges posed by a dynamic and uncertain environment. The mechanisms underlying such responses can in general be framed as input-output devices which map environment states (inputs) to associated responses (output. In this light, it is appealing to attempt to model these systems using information theory, a well developed mathematical framework to describe input-output systems. Under the information theoretical perspective, an organism’s behavior is fully characterized by the repertoire of its outputs under different environmental conditions. Due to natural selection, it is reasonable to assume this input-output mapping has been fine tuned in such a way as to maximize the organism’s fitness. If that is the case, it should be possible to abstract away the mechanistic implementation details and obtain the general principles that lead to fitness under a certain environment. These can then be used inferentially to both generate hypotheses about the underlying implementation as well as predict novel responses under external perturbations. In this work I use information theory to address the question of how biological systems generate complex outputs using relatively simple mechanisms in a robust manner. In particular, I will examine how communication and distributed processing can lead to emergent phenomena which allow collective systems to respond in a much richer way than a single organism could