2,640 research outputs found
06031 Abstracts Collection -- Organic Computing -- Controlled Emergence
Organic Computing has emerged recently as a challenging vision for
future information processing systems, based on the insight that we
will soon be surrounded by large collections of autonomous systems
equipped with sensors and actuators to be aware of their environment,
to communicate freely, and to organize themselves in order to perform
the actions and services required. Organic Computing Systems will
adapt dynamically to the current conditions of its environment, they
will be self-organizing, self-configuring, self-healing,
self-protecting, self-explaining, and context-aware.
From 15.01.06 to 20.01.06, the Dagstuhl Seminar 06031 ``Organic
Computing -- Controlled Emergence\u27\u27 was held in the International
Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl.
The seminar was characterized by the very constructive search for
common ground between engineering and natural sciences, between
informatics on the one hand and biology, neuroscience, and chemistry
on the other. The common denominator was the objective to build
practically usable self-organizing and emergent systems or their
components.
An indicator for the practical orientation of the seminar was the
large number of OC application systems, envisioned or already under
implementation, such as the Internet, robotics, wireless sensor
networks, traffic control, computer vision, organic systems on chip,
an adaptive and self-organizing room with intelligent sensors or
reconfigurable guiding systems for smart office buildings. The
application orientation was also apparent by the large number of
methods and tools presented during the seminar, which might be used as
building blocks for OC systems, such as an evolutionary design
methodology, OC architectures, especially several implementations of
observer/controller structures, measures and measurement tools for
emergence and complexity, assertion-based methods to control
self-organization, wrappings, a software methodology to build
reflective systems, and components for OC middleware.
Organic Computing is clearly oriented towards applications but is
augmented at the same time by more theoretical bio-inspired and
nature-inspired work, such as chemical computing, theory of complex
systems and non-linear dynamics, control mechanisms in insect swarms,
homeostatic mechanisms in the brain, a quantitative approach to
robustness, abstraction and instantiation as a central metaphor for
understanding complex systems.
Compared to its beginnings, Organic Computing is coming of age. The OC
vision is increasingly padded with meaningful applications and usable
tools, but the path towards full OC systems is still complex. There is
progress in a more scientific understanding of emergent processes. In
the future, we must understand more clearly how to open the
configuration space of technical systems for on-line
modification. Finally, we must make sure that the human user remains
in full control while allowing the systems to optimize
The Machine Conception of the Organism in Development and Evolution: A Critical Analysis
This article critically examines one of the most prevalent metaphors in modern biology, namely the machine conception of the organism (MCO). Although the fundamental differences between organisms and machines make the MCO an inadequate metaphor for conceptualizing living systems, many biologists and philosophers continue to draw upon the MCO or tacitly accept it as the standard model of the organism. This paper analyses the specific difficulties that arise when the MCO is invoked in the study of development and evolution. In developmental biology the MCO underlies a logically incoherent model of ontogeny, the genetic program, which serves to legitimate three problematic theses about development: genetic animism, neo-preformationism, and developmental computability. In evolutionary biology the MCO is responsible for grounding unwarranted theoretical appeals to the concept of design as well as to the interpretation of natural selection as an engineer, which promote a distorted understanding of the process and products of evolutionary change. Overall, it is argued that, despite its heuristic value, the MCO today is impeding rather than enabling further progress in our comprehension of living systems
Inspired Design: Using Interdisciplinarity And Biomimicry For Software Innovation
This thesis presents research and proposes a framework for increasing the breadth and depth of interdisciplinary knowledge in the field of computer science. The intent is to address an increasing problem of complexity in software and computing systems. The approach is to equip software developers and computer scientists with a contextual perspective and a set of strategies for injecting innovation and creativity into the solutions they design by leveraging knowledge and models outside the traditional realm of computer science. A review of current and historical forms of interdisciplinarity and biomimicry are presented to build that context. The strategies presented include interdisciplinary education, interdisciplinary collaboration, interdisciplinary tools, biomimetic design, and the creation of new pattern languages based on nature\u27s design solutions. Each of these strategies stems from and leads to an open exchange of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries. When taken together, the knowledge and strategies presented are intended to inspire and foster a paradigm that recognizes the value of human and natural diversity as a source of innovation
Magnetism, FeS colloids, and Origins of Life
A number of features of living systems: reversible interactions and weak
bonds underlying motor-dynamics; gel-sol transitions; cellular connected
fractal organization; asymmetry in interactions and organization; quantum
coherent phenomena; to name some, can have a natural accounting via
interactions, which we therefore seek to incorporate by expanding the horizons
of `chemistry-only' approaches to the origins of life. It is suggested that the
magnetic 'face' of the minerals from the inorganic world, recognized to have
played a pivotal role in initiating Life, may throw light on some of these
issues. A magnetic environment in the form of rocks in the Hadean Ocean could
have enabled the accretion and therefore an ordered confinement of
super-paramagnetic colloids within a structured phase. A moderate H-field can
help magnetic nano-particles to not only overcome thermal fluctuations but also
harness them. Such controlled dynamics brings in the possibility of accessing
quantum effects, which together with frustrations in magnetic ordering and
hysteresis (a natural mechanism for a primitive memory) could throw light on
the birth of biological information which, as Abel argues, requires a
combination of order and complexity. This scenario gains strength from
observations of scale-free framboidal forms of the greigite mineral, with a
magnetic basis of assembly. And greigite's metabolic potential plays a key role
in the mound scenario of Russell and coworkers-an expansion of which is
suggested for including magnetism.Comment: 42 pages, 5 figures, to be published in A.R. Memorial volume, Ed
Krishnaswami Alladi, Springer 201
A survey on engineering approaches for self-adaptive systems (extended version)
The complexity of information systems is increasing in recent years, leading to increased effort for maintenance and configuration. Self-adaptive systems (SASs) address this issue. Due to new computing trends, such as pervasive computing, miniaturization of IT leads to mobile devices with the emerging need for context adaptation. Therefore, it is beneficial that devices are able to adapt context. Hence, we propose to extend the definition of SASs and include
context adaptation. This paper presents a taxonomy of self-adaptation and a survey on engineering SASs. Based on the taxonomy and the survey, we motivate a new perspective on SAS including context adaptation
Toward an Agent-Agnostic Transmission Model: Synthesizing Anthropocentric and Technocentric Paradigms in Communication
Technological and social evolutions have prompted operational, phenomenological, and ontological shifts in communication processes. These shifts, we argue, trigger the need to regard human and machine roles in communication processes in a more egalitarian fashion. Integrating anthropocentric and technocentric perspectives on communication, we propose an agent-agnostic framework for human-machine communication. This framework rejects exclusive assignment of communicative roles (sender, message, channel, receiver) to traditionally held agents and instead focuses on evaluating agents according to their functions as a means for considering what roles are held in communication processes. As a first step in advancing this agent-agnostic perspective, this theoretical paper offers three potential criteria that both humans and machines could satisfy: agency, interactivity, and influence. Future research should extend our agent-agnostic framework to ensure that communication theory will be prepared to deal with an ostensibly machine-inclusive future
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