Social scale and collective computation: Does information processing limit rate of growth in scale?

Collective computation is the process by which groups store and share information to arrive at decisions for collective behavior. How societies engage in effective collective computation depends partly on their scale. Social arrangements and technologies that work for small- and mid-scale societies are inadequate for dealing effectively with the much larger communication loads that societies face during the growth in scale that is a hallmark of the Holocene. An important bottleneck for growth may be the development of systems for persistent recording of information (writing), and perhaps also the abstraction of money for generalizing exchange mechanisms. Building on Shin et al., we identify a Scale Threshold to be crossed before societies can develop such systems, and an Information Threshold which, once crossed, allows more or less unlimited growth in scale. We introduce several additional articles in this special issue that elaborate or evaluate this Thresholds Model for particular types of societies or times and places in the world.1 Introduction 2 Seshat: The Global History Databank 2.1 Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization 2.2 Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolution 2.3 Evolution of collective computational abilities of (pre)historic societies 3 Empirical Fluctuation, or Stochastic Law? 4 Opening the Discussion on Collective Computation: Historical Survey and Introduction to the Case Studies 4.1 Marcus Hamilton: Collective computation and the emergence of hunter-gatherer small-worlds 4.2 Laura Ellyson: Applying Gregory Johnson’s concepts of scalar stress to scale and Information Thresholds in Holocene social evolution 4.3 Johannes Müller et al.: Tripolye mega-sites: “Collective computational abilities” of prehistoric proto-urban societies? 4.4 Steven Wernke: Explosive expansion, sociotechnical diversity, and fragile sovereignty in the domain of the Inka 4.5 Gary Feinman and David Carballo: Communication, computation, and governance: A multiscalar vantage on the prehispanic Mesoamerican World 4.6 Ian Morris: Scale, information-processing, and complementarities in Old-World Axial-Age societies 5 Conclusion 6 Postscript: the Second Social Media Revolutio

The nature of small-scale farmer managed irrigation systems in North West Province, Sri Lanka and potential for aquaculture

RRAs were carried out in two Small Tank Cascade systems (STCs) of North West Province, Sri Lanka (less than 1000 ha total watershed area). A total of 21 tanks and 7 villages were investigated with primary emphasis on two upper watershed communities. The two systems differ primarily in their resource base; namely rainfall, natural forests and proximity to large scale perennial irrigation resources. [PDF contains 86 pages

The Digital Agenda Toolbox

The Digital Agenda Toolbox provides support to regional and national authorities to develop a thorough understanding of the digital growth potential stemming from the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE). It highlights the opportunities Information and Communication Technology (ICT) entails as a key element in their national or regional research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) and related Operational Programmes (OPs). At the same time, this Toolbox provides guidance for the fulfilment of the DAE-related ex-ante conditionalities that will form the basis for using European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) for ICT investments. It thus complements the RIS3 Guide and other related policy documents such as the Guide on Broadband Investment. The Toolbox furthermore provides hands-on assistance for developing a strategic policy framework for digital growth by discussing the dos and don'ts of the process and giving examples of good practises.JRC.J.2 - Knowledge for Growt

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Urban food strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: what's specific and what's at stake?

Integrating a larger set of instruments into Rural Development Programmes implied an increasing focus on monitoring and evaluation. Against the highly diversified experience with regard to implementation of policy instruments the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has been set up by the EU Commission as a strategic and streamlined method of evaluating programmes’ impacts. Its indicator-based approach mainly reflects the concept of a linear, measure-based intervention logic that falls short of the true nature of RDP operation and impact capacity on rural changes. Besides the different phases of the policy process, i.e. policy design, delivery and evaluation, the regional context with its specific set of challenges and opportunities seems critical to the understanding and improvement of programme performance. In particular the role of local actors can hardly be grasped by quantitative indicators alone, but has to be addressed by assessing processes of social innovation. This shift in the evaluation focus underpins the need to take account of regional implementation specificities and processes of social innovation as decisive elements for programme performance.

The Social Evolution of World Politics

How can we understand long-term change in world politics better? Based on readings of thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Foucault and Luhmann, the authors of this book propose a framework for understanding such change in terms of social evolution. They show that processes of social learning and unlearning are key to understanding the long-term historical evolution of complex societies, and propose to approach these with the core concepts of autonomization, hierarchical complexity, and co-evolution. Three case studies illustrate this social evolutionary perspective to the study of world politics, examining the evolution of forms of organizing political authority, of conflicts, of diplomacy, of law as boundary condition

The Social Evolution of World Politics

How can we understand long-term change in world politics better? Based on readings of thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Foucault and Luhmann, the authors of this book propose a framework for understanding such change in terms of social evolution. They show that processes of social learning and unlearning are key to understanding the long-term historical evolution of complex societies, and propose to approach these with the core concepts of autonomization, hierarchical complexity, and co-evolution. Three case studies illustrate this social evolutionary perspective to the study of world politics, examining the evolution of forms of organizing political authority, of conflicts, of diplomacy, of law as boundary condition