Contributions to an anthropological approach to the cultural adaptation of migrant agents

This thesis proposes the use of Cultural Anthropology as a source of inspiration for solutions to the problem of adaptation of autonomous, intelligent, computational agents that migrate to societies of agents with distinctive features from the ones of the society where those agents were originally conceived. This has implications for interoperation of disparate Multi-Agent Systems. In particular, the cognitive approach to anthropology is argued to be a suitable theoretical foun-dation for this topic. Fieldwork practice in social anthropology is also indicated as an useful source of ideas. A pragmatic theory of intensionality is incorporated in this anthropological approach, resulting in a mechanism that allows agents to ascribe intensional ontologies of terms to societies that use unfamiliar means of communication; also, taxonomical relations among the terms in such ontologies can be retrieved, by means of a process inspired by the counterpart activity of ethnographers. This is presented using the Z notation for formal specification of systems, and illustrated on a set of terms from the game of cricket. Subsequently, a simulation of a game of cricket is described where one of the players is unfamiliar with the game, and therefore needs to learn the game by observing the other players. A reasonable behaviour for such a player is obtained, and the simulation offers grounds for further anthropologically-based studies. Further, a study of theories of moral sentiments is presented, and the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is used in simulations based on those ideas. The results of the simulations show clearly the positive impact, on groups of agents, of altruistic behaviour; this can only be coherently obtained in autonomous agents by modelling emotions, which are relevant for this project as anthropologists recognise them as an essential cross-cultural link. Finally, the consequences of this project to conceptions of Distributed Artificial Intelligence are discussed

A complex systems approach to education in Switzerland

The insights gained from the study of complex systems in biological, social, and engineered systems enables us not only to observe and understand, but also to actively design systems which will be capable of successfully coping with complex and dynamically changing situations. The methods and mindset required for this approach have been applied to educational systems with their diverse levels of scale and complexity. Based on the general case made by Yaneer Bar-Yam, this paper applies the complex systems approach to the educational system in Switzerland. It confirms that the complex systems approach is valid. Indeed, many recommendations made for the general case have already been implemented in the Swiss education system. To address existing problems and difficulties, further steps are recommended. This paper contributes to the further establishment complex systems approach by shedding light on an area which concerns us all, which is a frequent topic of discussion and dispute among politicians and the public, where billions of dollars have been spent without achieving the desired results, and where it is difficult to directly derive consequences from actions taken. The analysis of the education system's different levels, their complexity and scale will clarify how such a dynamic system should be approached, and how it can be guided towards the desired performance

Pity and anger in the poetry of William Blake from 'Poetical sketches' to 'Milton'

This thesis gives an account of the ideas about pity and anger in Blake's poetry from Poetical Sketches to Milton, placing them in their historical and intellectual contexts. Chapter 1 introduces the main themes, arguing that Blake saw himself as a counter-ideologist, working to change social and individual 'structures of feeling'. It suggests that his ideas were influenced by his class position, by the French Revolution, and by developments in eighteenth-century thinking. Chapter 2 shows that in the early work Blake engages with problems of male identity that will concern him throughout his career and provide another context for his thinking about anger and pity. Chapter 3 deals with the impasse of the late 1780s. The fourth Chapter claims that Songs of Innocence represents Blake's attempt to create a kind of compassion that will lead to and then characterise a redeeýhed society. The fifth Chapter locates The French Revolution in the Burke debate and points out that 'Let the Brothels of Paris be opened' shows important similarities in its treatment of pity to the speeches and articles of the Jacobin leaders. Chapter 6 contests the views of critics who have unproblematically presented anger as a virtue and pity as a vice in Songs of Experience. Chapter 7 suggests that the ideology of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is determined by an economic impossibility that creates a politics of feeling rather than of strategies and institutions. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss the Prophetic Books as analyses of the psychology of revolutionary aspiration and failure. Chapter 10 argues that The Four Zoas depicts the reconstitution of a degraded anger and pity that are nevertheless doomed to social failure except in the 'imaginary' of the final apocalypse, while Chapter 11 contextualises the 'Sciences' of Wrath and Pity in Milton. The final Chapter is a short resume and forward glance

Microevolutionary language theory

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-245).A new microevolutionary theory of complex design within language is proposed. Experiments were carried out that support the theory that complex functional design - adaptive complexity - accumulates due to the evolutionary algorithm at the simplest levels within human natural language. A large software system was developed which identifies and tracks evolutionary dynamics within text discourse. With this system hundreds of examples of activity suggesting evolutionary significance were distilled from a text collection of many millions of words. Research contributions include: (1) An active replicator model of microevolutionary dynamics within natural language, (2) methods to distill active replicators offering evidence of evolutionary processes in action and at multiple linguistic levels (lexical, lexical co-occurrence, lexico-syntactic, and syntactic), (3) a demonstration that language evolution and organic evolution are both examples of a single over-arching evolutionary algorithm, (4) a set of tools to comparatively study language over time, and (5) methods to materially improve text retrieval.by Michael Lloyd Best.Ph.D

Order and the literary rendering of chaos : children's literature as knowledge, order, and social foundation

[À l'origine dans / Was originally part of : Thèses et mémoires - FAS - Département de littérature comparée]Depuis que l'animal humain a conçu un système de technologies pour la pensée abstraite grâce au langage, la guerre contre le monde sauvage est devenu une voie à sens unique vers l'aliénation, la civilisation et la littérature. Le but de ce travail est d'analyser comment les récits civilisationnels donnent une structure à l'expérience par le biais de la ségrégation, de la domestication, de la sélection, et de l'extermination, tandis que les récits sauvages démontrent les possibilités infinies du chaos pour découvrir le monde en toute sa diversité et en lien avec sa communauté de vie. Un des objectifs de cette thèse a été de combler le fossé entre la science et la littérature, et d'examiner l'interdépendance de la fiction et la réalité. Un autre objectif a été de mettre ces récits au cœur d'un dialogue les uns avec les autres, ainsi que de tracer leur expression dans les différentes disciplines et œuvres pour enfants et adultes mais également d’analyser leur manifestations c’est redondant dans la vie réelle. C'est un effort multi-disciplinaires qui se reflète dans la combinaison de méthodes de recherche en anthropologie et en études littéraires. Cette analyse compare et contraste trois livres de fiction pour enfants qui présentent trois différents paradigmes socio-économiques, à savoir, «Winnie-l'Ourson» de Milne qui met en place un monde civilisé monarcho-capitaliste, la trilogie de Nosov sur «les aventures de Neznaika et ses amis» qui présente les défis et les exploits d'une société anarcho-socialiste dans son évolution du primitivisme vers la technologie, et les livres de Moomines de Jansson, qui représentent le chaos, l'anarchie, et l'état sauvage qui contient tout, y compris des épisodes de civilisation. En axant la méthodologie de ma recherche sur la façon dont nous connaissons le monde, j'ai d'abord examiné la construction, la transmission et l'acquisition des connaissances, en particulier à travers la théorie de praxis de Bourdieu et la critique de la civilisation développée dans les études de Zerzan, Ong, et Goody sur les liens entre l'alphabétisation, la dette et l'oppression. Quant à la littérature pour enfants, j'ai choisi trois livres que j’ai connus pendant mon enfance, c'est-à-dire des livres qui sont devenus comme une «langue maternelle» pour moi. En ce sens, ce travail est aussi de «l’anthropologie du champ natif». En outre, j’analyse les prémisses sous-jacentes qui se trouvent non seulement dans les trois livres, mais dans le déroulement des récits de l'état sauvage et de la civilisation dans la vie réelle, des analyses qui paraissent dans cette thèse sous la forme d'extraits d’un journal ethnographique. De même que j’examine la nature de la littérature ainsi que des structures civilisées qui domestiquent le monde au moyen de menaces de mort, je trace aussi la présence de ces récits dans l'expression scientifique (le récit malthusien-darwinien), religieuse, et dans autres expressions culturelles, et réfléchis sur les défis présentés par la théorie anarchiste (Kropotkine) ainsi que par les livres pour enfants écrits du point de vue sauvage, tels que ceux des Moomines.Ever since the human animal devised a system of technologies for abstract thought through language, the war on wilderness has become a one way path towards alienation, civilisation and literature. In this work, I examine how the civilised narrative orders experience by means of segregation, domestication, breeding, and extermination; whereas, I argue that the stories and narratives of wilderness project chaos and infinite possibilities for experiencing the world through a diverse community of life. One of my goals in conducting this study on children's literature as knowledge, culture and social foundation has been to bridge the gap between science and literature and to examine the interconnectedness of fiction and reality as a two-way road. Another aim has been to engage these narratives in a dialogue with each other as I trace their expression in the various disciplines and books written for both children and adults as well as analyse the manifestation of fictional narratives in real life. This is both an inter- and multi-disciplinary endeavour that is reflected in the combination of research methods drawn from anthropology and literary studies as well as in the content that traces the narratives of order and chaos, or civilisation and wilderness, in children's literature and our world. I have chosen to compare and contrast three fictional children's books that offer three different real-world socio-economic paradigms, namely, A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh projecting a civilised monarcho-capitalist world, Nikolai Nosov's trilogy on The Adventures of Dunno and Friends as presenting the challenges and feats of an anarcho-socialist society in evolution from primitivism towards technology, and Tove Jansson's Moominbooks depicting chaos, anarchy, and wilderness that contain everything, including encounters with civilisation, but most of all an infinite love for the world. Stemming from the basic question in research methodology on how we know the world, I first examine the construction, transmission, and acquisition of knowledge, particularly through the lens of Bourdieu's theory of praxis, as well as the critique of language and literacy through Zerzan's, Ong's, and Goody's studies on the links between literacy, debt and oppression. Regarding children's literature depicting the three socio-economic paradigms, I chose three books with which I have been familiar since childhood, i.e. in whose narratives I have “native fluency” and, in this sense, this work is also about “anthropology at home”. Moreover, I compared and contrasted the underlying premises not only in the three books, but also with the unfolding narratives of wilderness and civilisation in real life, that I inserted in the form of ethnographic/journal entries throughout the dissertation. As I examine the very nature of literature, culture, and language and the civilised structures that domesticate the world through the threat of death and the expropriation of food, I also trace the presence of these narratives in the scientific (the Malthusian-Darwinian narrative), religious, and other cultural expressions and the challenges provided by anarchist science and theory (Kropotkin) as well as wild children's books such as Jansson's Moomintrolls

Selfish Memes and Selfless Agents - Altruism in the Swap Shop", to be presented at The

sharing scenario. “Agents " are represented as cells on a grid applying simple cultural learning rules which selectively replicate and repel memes from neighbours. The memes represent culturally learned traits (Axelrod’s 1995) but also influence resource sharing behaviours. In the experiments presented, multiple cultural groupings which become altruistic towards "in-group " members via a form of group selection (Pedone & Parisi 1997) emerge. This form of cultural evolution is offered as a unified approach to the study of group formation, cultural evolution, cooperation and altruism. Memes are viewed as the basic replicators upon which societies are constructed. It is demonstrated that such methods can produce more optimal societies than conventional evolutionary methods in given situations. The memetic approach is inherently distributed and dynamic, offering the possibility of application to areas such as collective robotics and software agent co-ordination. Within DAI and the game theoretical literature a fundamental question is often posed: Given bounded rationality and knowledge, what conditions produce cooperative and/or altruistic interagen

Managing the Paradox of Growth in Brand Communities Through Social Media

The commercial benefits of online brand communities are an important focus for marketers seeking deeper engagement with increasingly elusive consumers. Managing participation in these socially bound brand conversations challenges practitioners to balance authenticity towards the community against corporate goals. This is important as social media proliferation affords communities the capacity to reach a scale well beyond their offline equivalents and to operate independently of brands. While research has identified the important elements of engagement in brand communities, less is known about how strategies required to maximise relationships in these circumstances must change with growth. Using a case study approach, we examine how a rapidly growing firm and its community have managed the challenges of a maturing relationship. We find that, in time, the community becomes self-sustaining, and a new set of marketing management strategies is required to move engagement to the next level

Managing the Paradox of Growth in Brand Communities Through Social Media

The commercial benefits of online brand communities are an important focus for marketers seeking deeper engagement with increasingly elusive consumers. Managing participation in these socially bound brand conversations challenges practitioners to balance authenticity towards the community against corporate goals. This is important as social media proliferation affords communities the capacity to reach a scale well beyond their offline equivalents and to operate independently of brands. While research has identified the important elements of engagement in brand communities, less is known about how strategies required to maximise relationships in these circumstances must change with growth. Using a case study approach, we examine how a rapidly growing firm and its community have managed the challenges of a maturing relationship. We find that, in time, the community becomes self-sustaining, and a new set of marketing management strategies is required to move engagement to the next level