Manifesto of computational social science

The increasing integration of technology into our lives has created unprecedented volumes of data on society's everyday behaviour. Such data opens up exciting new opportunities to work towards a quantitative understanding of our complex social systems, within the realms of a new discipline known as Computational Social Science. Against a background of financial crises, riots and international epidemics, the urgent need for a greater comprehension of the complexity of our interconnected global society and an ability to apply such insights in policy decisions is clear. This manifesto outlines the objectives of this new scientific direction, considering the challenges involved in it, and the extensive impact on science, technology and society that the success of this endeavour is likely to bring about.The publication of this work was partially supported by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement No. 284709, a Coordination and Support Action in the Information and Communication Technologies activity area (‘FuturICT’ FET Flagship Pilot Project). We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments.Publicad

Sonic diaspora, vibrations and rhythm: thinking through the sounding of the Jamaican dancehall session

The propagation of vibrations may provide a better way of understanding diasporic spread than the conventional focus on the circulation of products (Hall 1980, Appadurai 1986, 1996, Gilroy 1993a, Brah 1996). Jamaican sound systems operate as a broadcast medium and a source of CDs, DVDs and other commercial products (Henriques 2007a). But the dancehall sound system session also propagates a broad spectrum of frequencies diffused through a range of media and activities - described as “sounding” (following Small’s 1998 concept of “musicking”). These include the material vibrations of the signature low-pitched auditory frequencies of Reggae as a bass culture (Johnson 1980), at the loudness of “sonic dominance” (Henriques 2003). Secondly a session propagates the corporeal vibrations of rituals, dance routines and bass-line “riddims” (Veal 2007). Thirdly it propagates the ethereal vibrations (Henriques 2007b), “vibes” or atmosphere of the sexually charged popular subculture by which the crowd (audience) appreciate each dancehall session as part of the Dancehall scene (Cooper 2004). The paper concludes that thinking though vibrating frequencies makes it easier to appreciate how audiences with no direct or inherited connection with a particular music genre can be energetically infected and affected - to form a sonic diaspora

'I, Max' - Communicating with an artificial agent

Wachsmuth I. 'I, Max' - Communicating with an artificial agent. In: Wachsmuth I, Knoblich G, eds. Modeling Communication with Robots and Virtual Humans. Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 4930. Berlin: Springer; 2008: 279-295.With the advent of communicating machines in the form of embodied agents the question gets ever more interesting under which circumstances such systems could be attributed some sort of consciousness and self-identity. We are likely to ascribe to an agent with human appearance and conducting reasonable natural language dialog that it has desires, goals, and intentions. Taking the example of ’Max’, a humanoid agent embodied in virtual reality, this contribution examines under which circumstances an artificial agent could be said to have intentional states and perceive others as intentional agents. We will link our examination to the question of how such a system could have selfawareness and how this is grounded in its (virtual) physis and its social context. We shall discuss how Max could be equipped with the capacity to differentiate between his own and a partner’s mental states and under which conditions Max could reasonably speak of himself as ’I’

Learning in BDI Multi-agent Systems

International audienceThis paper deals with the issue of learning in multi-agent systems (MAS). Particularly, we are interested in BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) agents. Despite the relevance of the BDI model of rational agency, little work has been done to deal with its two main limitations: i) The lack of learning competences; and ii) The lack of explicit multi-agent functionality. From the multi-agent learning perspective, we propose a BDI agent architecture extended with learning competences for MAS context. Induction of Logical Decision Trees, a first order method, is used to enable agents to learn when their plans are successfully executable. Our implementation enables multiple agents executed as parallel functions in a single Lisp image. In addition, our approach maintains consistency between learning and the theory of practical reasoning

Reductionist and Antireductionist Perspectives on Dynamics

Contains fulltext : 62463.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)In this paper, reduction and its pragmatics are discussed in light of the development in computer science of languages to describe processes. The design of higher-level description languages within computer science has had the aim of allowing for description of the dynamics of processes in the (physical) world on a higher level avoiding all (physical) details of these processes. The higher description levels developed have dramatically increased the complexity of applications that came within reach. The pragmatic attitude of a (scientific) practitioner in this area has become inherently anti-reductionist, but based on well-established reduction relations. The paper discusses how this perspective can be related to reduction in general, and to other domains where description of dynamics plays a main role, in particular, biological and cognitive domains

Towards Integration of Biological, Psychological, and Social Aspects in Agent-Based Simulation of Violent Offenders

In the analysis of criminal behavior, a combination of biological, psychological and social aspects may be taken into account. Dynamical modeling methods developed in recent years often address biological, psychological or social dynamical systems separately. This paper makes the first step in the development of an agent-based modeling approach for criminal behavior in which these aspects are integrated in one dynamical system. It is shown how within a certain (multi-agent) social context, biological factors, such as certain brain deviations, testosterone levels and serotonin levels, affect cognitive and emotional functioning in such a way that a crime is committed when the perceived opportunity is there. This paper presents one generic model for the behavior of violent offenders with parameters that can be set to obtain simulation traces for three known types of offenders. © 2009, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved