Going Stupid with EcoLab

In 2005, Railsback et al. proposed a very simple model ({\em Stupid Model}) that could be implemented within a couple of hours, and later extended to demonstrate the use of common ABM platform functionality. They provided implementations of the model in several agent based modelling platforms, and compared the platforms for ease of implementation of this simple model, and performance. In this paper, I implement Railsback et al's Stupid Model in the EcoLab simulation platform, a C++ based modelling platform, demonstrating that it is a feasible platform for these sorts of models, and compare the performance of the implementation with Repast, Mason and Swarm versions

Monkeys, typewriters and networks: the internet in the light of the theory of accidental excellence

Viewed in the light of the theory of accidental excellence, there is much to suggest that the success of the Internet and its various protocols derives from a communications technology accident, or better, a series of accidents. In the early 1990s, many experts still saw the Internet as an academic toy that would soon vanish into thin air again. The Internet probably gained its reputation as an academic toy largely because it violated the basic principles of traditional communications networks. The quarrel about paradigms that erupted in the 1970s between the telephony world and the newly emerging Internet community was not, however, only about transmission technology doctrines. It was also about the question – still unresolved today – as to who actually governs the flow of information: the operators or the users of the network? The paper first describes various network architectures in relation to the communication cultures expressed in their make-up. It then examines the creative environment found at the nodes of the network, whose coincidental importance for the Internet boom must not be forgotten. Finally, the example of Usenet is taken to look at the kind of regulatory practices that have emerged in the communications services provided within the framework of a decentralised network architecture. --

Neal Stephenson’s Readme: a critique of gamification

Neal Stephenson’s writing has in many ways shaped post-cyberpunk science fiction as well as having a massive influence on real-world technology, so his move to realism with 2011’s Reamde offers an opportunity to understand science fiction’s changing relationship to realism in the twenty-first century. Stephenson is considered a core cyberpunk writer thanks to 1992’s Snow Crash, a novel that depicts an online virtual world known as the ‘Metaverse’. This novel is based on the premise that the actions of an online world could have a material impact on participants outside of the game: namely, gamers can be brain damaged by a computer virus. Stephenson has continued to explore these themes throughout his career, but recently through contemporary settings, rather than the futures of his science fiction. Stephenson’s Reamde could therefore be considered an example of ‘science fiction realism’, a term coined by Veronica Hollinger to describe William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition (2003), a novel which also uses science fictional tropes and techniques, but in a contemporary setting

Justice Holmes, Ralph Kramden, and the Civic Virtues of a Tax Return Filing Requirement

A major goal of some tax reform proponents is the elimination of the return filing requirement for many or all Americans. Although the President\u27s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform heard several hours of testimony concerning the possibility of a return-free income tax system, the Report of the Panel failed even to discuss the issue. This Article contends that the Panel was right to recommend (by implication) the retention of a return-based tax system, given the Panel\u27s recommendations for major tax simplification. As long as the return filing obligation is not unduly burdensome which it would not be under the Panel\u27s simplification proposals a filing obligation has significant civic virtues. A return-based system represents an appropriate compromise on the level of visibility and painfulness of taxation, and the filing of an tax return can serve an important ceremonial function as an expression of fiscal citizenship. The civic potential of return filing is not now realized because of the tremendous complexity of the income tax, but that potential could be realized under a simplified system