The ontological revolution: On the phenomenology of the internet

Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the ‘mechanization’ of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize[1], even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late ‘60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata[2]. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of human cognition to cybernetic systems. The emergence of the world-wide-web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities

About Hierarchical XML Structures, Replacement of Relational Data Structures in Construction and Implementation of ERP Systems

The projects essential objective is to develop a new ERP system, of homogeneous nature, based on XML structures, as a possible replacement for classic ERP systems. The criteria that guide the objective definition are modularity, portability and Web connectivity. This objective is connected to a series of secondary objectives, considering that the technological approach will be filtered through the economic, social and legislative environment for a validation-by-context study. Statistics and cybernetics are to be used for simulation purposes. The homogeneous approach is meant to provide strong modularity and portability, in relation with the n-tier principles, but the main advantage of the model is its opening to the semantic Web, based on a Small enterprise ontology defined with XML-driven languages. Shockwave solutions will be used for implementing client-oriented hypermedia elements and an XML Gate will be de-fined between black box modules, for a clear separation with obvious advantages. Security and the XMLTP project will be an important issue for XML transfers due to the conflict between the open architecture of the Web, the readability of XML data and the privacy elements which have to be preserved within a business environment. The projects finality is oriented on small business but the semantic Web perspective and the surprising new conflict between hierarchical/network data structures and relational ones will certainly widen its scope. The proposed model is meant to fulfill the IT compatibility requirements of the European environment, defined as a knowledge society. The paper is a brief of the contributions of the team re-search at the project type A applied to CNCSIS "Research on the Role of XML in Building Extensible and Homogeneous ERP Systems".XML structures, database management system

A Novel Approach To User Agent String Parsing For Vulnerability Analysis Using Mutli-Headed Attention

The increasing reliance on the internet has led to the proliferation of a diverse set of web-browsers and operating systems (OSs) capable of browsing the web. User agent strings (UASs) are a component of web browsing that are transmitted with every Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request. They contain information about the client device and software, which is used by web servers for various purposes such as content negotiation and security. However, due to the proliferation of various browsers and devices, parsing UASs is a non-trivial task due to a lack of standardization of UAS formats. Current rules-based approaches are often brittle and can fail when encountering such non-standard formats. In this work, a novel methodology for parsing UASs using Multi-Headed Attention Based transformers is proposed. The proposed methodology exhibits strong performance in parsing a variety of UASs with differing formats. Furthermore, a framework to utilize parsed UASs to estimate the vulnerability scores for large sections of publicly visible IT networks or regions is also discussed. The methodology present here can also be easily extended or deployed for real-time parsing of logs in enterprise settings.Comment: Accepted to the International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC) 202

A cooperative planning algorithm to improve performance in Web domains

Proceeding of: IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC-2002), 6-9 Oct. 2002, Hammamet, TunezIn this paper, we present MAPWEB, a multiagent framework that integrates planning agents and Web information retrieval agents. The goal of this framework is to deal with problems that require planning with information to be gathered from the Web. Because of flexibility and efficiency reasons, MAPWEB decouples planning from information gathering by splitting a planning problem into two parts: solving an abstract problem and validating and completing abstract solutions by means of information gathering. We focus on the planning process in order to improve its efficiency. There are two ways of improving the efficiency of the MAPWEB planning algorithm: by accelerating the planning process itself and by storing previously solved planning problems. The first has been achieved by designing a cooperative planning algorithm that allows a set of planning agents to share plans and cooperate while planning to increase efficiency. The second is currently being designed and developed to allow planning agents to reuse the acquired knowledge. Finally, this paper presents experimental evaluation of the cooperative planning process when it is used by the planning agents.Publicad

From the ecology of the human spirit to the development of the orchestral theory of communication: the inclusion of the medium-message axiom

The contributions of the biologist, anthropologist and communication theorist Gregory Bateson (1904- 1980) form the nucleus of the cross-disciplinary theoretical principles which led to the founding of the web of thought spun by Watzlawick, Weakland, Beavin, Fish, Jackson, Erickson, Foster, Haley and Satir, amongst others. These authors were united by a common theoretical standpoint which foregrounded the ecology of the human spirit and saw communication as process, a system of transactional interaction. They were also similarly influenced by cybernetics, systems theory and constructivism. Energised by the clash of the ideas in their exchanges, they constructed the orchestral theory of communication, formalised by Paul Watzlawick, Donald Jackson and Janet Beavin. Today, Watzlawick (1967) is regarded as a seminal publication in the annals of interpersonal communication studies. Moving beyond the confines of the original object of study – face-to-face communication – this theory has been increasingly applied to the analysis of institutionally mediated communication and to the understanding of the construction of learning and change in organisations. However, in current circumstances, its set of axiomatic principles would benefit from the inclusion of a medium-message axiom to allow a fuller understanding of the realities of the mediated communication process that the process contains. This paper proposes the inclusion of this new axiom, medium-message; a proposal which is based on the work of Gregory Bateson, the ecology of the human spirit, the orchestral theory of communication and the thinking of the Media Ecology Association. It aims to help build a more profound insight into the realities of the process of human communication

Visualization in cyber-geography: reconsidering cartography's concept of visualization in current usercentric cybergeographic cosmologies

This article discusses some epistemological problems of a semiotic and cybernetic character in two current scientific cosmologies in the study of geographic information systems (GIS) with special reference to the concept of visualization in modern cartography. Setting off from Michael Batty’s prolegomena for a virtual geography and Michael Goodchild’s “Human-Computer-Reality-Interaction” as the field of a new media convergence and networking of GIS-computation of geo-data, the paper outlines preliminarily a common field of study, namely that of cybernetic geography, or just “cyber-geography) owing to the principal similarities with second order cybernetics. Relating these geographical cosmologies to some of Science’s dominant, historical perceptions of the exploring and appropriating of Nature as an “inventory of knowledge”, the article seeks to identify some basic ontological and epistemological dimensions of cybernetic geography and visualization in modern cartography. The points made is that a generalized notion of visualization understood as the use of maps, or more precisely as cybergeographic GIS-thinking seems necessary as an epistemological as well as a methodological prerequisite to scientific knowledge in cybergeography. Moreover do these generalized concept seem to lead to a displacement of the positions traditionally held by the scientist and lay-man citizen, that is not only in respect of the perception of the matter studied, i.e. the field of geography, but also of the manner in which the scientist informs the lay-man citizen in the course of action in the public participation in decision making; a displacement that seems to lead to a more critical, or perhaps even quasi-scientific approach as concerns the lay-man user