Cybernetics, Fuzziness and Scientific Revolutions

Settimo Termini ​pioneered along with Aldo de Luca the concept of fuzziness measures in the sixties. Today he is a Full Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the University of Palermo and an affiliated researcher at the European Center for Soft Computing, Mieres (Asturias), Spain. He has directed from 2002 to 2009 the Istituto di Cibernetica "Eduardo Caianiello" of CNR (National Research Council) in Italy. Among his scientific interests, the introduction and formal development of the theory of (entropy) measures of fuzziness; an analysis in innovative terms of the notion of vague predicate as it appears and is used in Information Sciences, Cybernetics and AI. Recently he has been interested also in the connections between scientific research and economic development and the conceptual foundations of Fuzzy Sets and Soft Computing. He is Fellow of the International Fuzzy Systems Association and of the Accademia Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti of Palermo. In 2015 he will be 70, and we want to celebrate his birthday with the Soft Computing community with this interview where he discusses history of Cybernetics. The interview was conducted in Italian and translated by the authors

Disposizioni di agenti in spazi geometrici arbitrari: un approccio basato sulla computazione evolutiva

In many different social contexts, communication allows a collective intelligence to emerge. However, a correct way of exchanging information usually requires determined topological conigurations of the agents involved in the process. Such a coniguration should take into account several parameters, e.g. agents positioning, their proximity, time eficiency of communication. Our aim is to present an algorithm, based on evolutionary programming, which optimizes agents placement on arbitrarily shaped areas. In order to show its ability to deal with arbitrary bi-dimensional topologies, this algorithm has been tested on a set of differently shaped areas that present concavities, convexities and obstacles. This approach can be extended to deal with concrete cases, such as object localization in a delimited area

Towards a fuzzy-linguistic based social network sentiment-expression system

Liking allows users of Social Networks, blogs and online magazines to express their support of posts and artifacts by a simple click. Such function is very popular but lacks semantic power, and some platforms have augmented it by allowing to choose a pictographic depiction corresponding to a feeling. What is gained in depth is lost in simplicity, and the wide acceptance liking has enjoyed did not carried to the sentiment version. We outline a sentiment-expression hybrid system based on textual analysis and linguistic fuzzy Markov chains overcoming the intrinsic limitations of liking without burdening the user with complex choices

Can you feel it will you tell me. Encouraging sentiment expression on the web

In a recent trend in web communication, news outlets and blog platforms allow readers to express opinions about what they have read by choosing an associated feeling, or sentiment ex- pression. This emerging trend, fitting between liking and full text comments, has not still found the popularity it should. The thesis of this paper is that this is also due to the way the sen- timent choice is presented to the user. In order to test this hy- pothesis we have devised a pilot experiment; results confirm that a simpler way of choice increases sentiment expression and yields result that are more aligned with ground truth

Agents Displacement in Arbitrary Geometrical Spaces: An Evolutionary Computation based Approach

In many different social contexts, communication allows a collective intelligence to emerge. However, a correct way of exchanging information usually requires determined topological configurations of the agents involved in the process. Such a configuration should take into account several parameters, e.g. agents positioning, their proximity and time efficiency of communication. Our aim is to present an algorithm, based on evolutionary programming, which optimizes agents placement on arbitrarily shaped areas. In order to show its ability to deal with arbitrary bi-dimensional topologies, this algorithm has been tested on a set of differently shaped areas that present concavities, convexities and obstacles. This approach can be extended to deal with concrete cases, such as object localization in a delimited area

Internet e Facebook. Addiction a confronto.

In questo studio pilota abbiamo misurato il livello di Internet Addiction dei soggetti sperimentali italiani in due condizioni: uso generale di Internet, ed uso specifico del SN Facebook, utilizzando la versione italiana di IAT sopra citata, e confrontato i risultati divisi per fasce di età