Complexity Aided Design: the FuturICT Technological Innovation Paradigm

"In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies--even our dreams ....What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel? How will we use its surges of sensation? For several years--maybe for a decade--there will be no central nervous system to manage this vast signaling network. Certainly there will be no central intelligence...some qualities of self-awareness will emerge once the Net is sensually enhanced. Sensuality is only one force pushing the Net toward intelligence". These statements are quoted by an interview by Cherry Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Physics. It is interesting to outline the timeliness and highly predicting power of these statements. In particular, we would like to point to the relevance of the question "What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel?" to the work we are going to discuss in this paper. There are many additional compelling questions, as for example: "How can the electronic earth's skin be made more resilient?"; "How can the earth's electronic skin be improved to better satisfy the need of our society?";"What can the science of complex systems contribute to this endeavour?

From paper maps to the Digital Earth and the Internet of Places

Maps have always been tools that have fascinated men, for their ability to make us see the world that surrounds us. They were and are the outcome of models and methods applied to the observation of the world, starting from geodesy, surveying photogrammetry and remote sensing. All these disciplines, which we now group under the new name of geomatics, have had a tremendous boost in recent years. However, the synergy with information computer technology is probably the aspect that is revolutionizing more cartography. Earlier computers and after the Internet have brought us to new concepts and tools that will have profound effects not only in the world of niche of cartographers, but also more generally in the life of all human beings. The Digital Earth, proposed in 1998 by Al Gore, has been enriched in just twenty years of a set of new demands, which make even more interesting and challenging being cartographers today. The paper, without claiming to be comprehensive, aims at providing a concise overview of the state of art and of the advancement in this area. Moreover, it urges the community of geomatics to be protagonist and promoter of a new cartography, largely to be reinvented, and that would put us at the center of processes of knowledge and management of the Earth. The map makers in the past helped discovering new worlds, now the challenge is to rediscover our common world with new eyes of environmental, social, economic equity, sustainability and participation

Complexity aided design: The FuturICT technological innovation paradigm

"In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies-even our dreams ....What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel? How will we use its surges of sensation? For several years-maybe for a decade-there will be no central nervous system to manage this vast signaling network. Certainly there will be no central intelligence...some qualities of self-awareness will emerge once the Net is sensually enhanced. Sensuality is only one force pushing the Net toward intelligence”. These statements are quoted by an interview by Cherry Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Physics. It is interesting to outline the timeliness and highly predicting power of these statements. In particular, we would like to point to the relevance of the question "What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel?” to the work we are going to discuss in this paper. There are many additional compelling questions, as for example: "How can the electronic earth's skin be made more resilient?”; "How can the earth's electronic skin be improved to better satisfy the need of our society?”;"What can the science of complex systems contribute to this endeavour?” Graphical abstrac

Microprocessors: the engines of the digital age

The microprocessor—a computer central processing unit integrated onto a single microchip—has come to dominate computing across all of its scales from the tiniest consumer appliance to the largest supercomputer. This dominance has taken decades to achieve, but an irresistible logic made the ultimate outcome inevitable. The objectives of this Perspective paper are to offer a brief history of the development of the microprocessor and to answer questions such as: where did the microprocessor come from, where is it now, and where might it go in the future

The Cross-border Electricity Business Cloud Services Platform Based On A Combination Of Cloud Computing Services Composition

Nowadays cloud computing industry has turned to the stage of small-scale application from the stage of import and preparation, so business model has become an integral part in cloud computing. According to the existing problem of commercial operation in cloud computing, by analyzing and forecasting the service composition effects, this paper proposes the theoretical thought of synthetic prediction of risk management for cloud computing services composition systems, gives a synthetic prediction model of services composition, namely multi-layer recurrent model, and analyzes it properties. Then based on multi-layer recurrent model, the construction and application prospect of the cloud service platform based on cloud computing service portfolio is discussed

Neural Networks for the Web Services Classification

This article introduces a n-gram-based approach to automatic classification of Web services using a multilayer perceptron-type artificial neural network. Web services contain information that is useful for achieving a classification based on its functionality. The approach relies on word n-grams extracted from the web service description to determine its membership in a category. The experimentation carried out shows promising results, achieving a classification with a measure F=0.995 using unigrams (2-grams) of words (characteristics composed of a lexical unit) and a TF-IDF weight

Desarrollo de un entorno de aprendizaje basado en u-learning

En los últimos años se ha incrementado en los ámbitos académicos, el interés por las temáticas vinculadas a la computación ubicua y en consecuencia también, por el aprendizaje ubicuo, dado que el uso de dispositivos móviles por parte de los estudiantes ha aumentado. De acuerdo a un estudio reciente, el S.O. Android® ha superado a Windows® en cantidad de usuarios. Lo anterior ha potenciado la utilización de tecnología de computación móvil, en particular lo que denomina Mobile Cloud Computing. En el presente artículo se comentan las características generales, propuestas para un sistema que permita definir un entorno de enseñanza basada en u-learning, aplicando tecnologías de geo-referenciación y realidad aumentada.Eje: Tecnología en Educación.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI