Complexity
“Social Entrepreneurship has Complexity Written All Over It”
That’s the title and conclusion of this paper by Jeffrery Goldstein et al which was presented at this talk at the Skoll Foundation International Social Innovation Conference 2009. Here’s a slide from that talk that I like:
If you like the theme of “Social Entrepreneurship, Systems Thinking and Complexity” — and I know that you do because that’s what this blog talks about a lot of the time — then you may want to attend (or even submit a paper/talk abstract to) the eponymously named conference at Adelphi University in New York (April 30 – May 2, 2010). Hope to see you there!
hat tip: Jerri Chou: @jchou…
Comments on Human Cultural Transformation
This is a followup to Ben’s post on Human Cultural Transformation Triggered by Dense Populations. Too many links for this to be accepted into the comments directly…
In thinking about these questions, it helps me to remind myself of the difference between evolution and emergence. Evolution happens whenever you have a population of agents with heritable variation and differential reproduction rates. There are at least two types of emergence, both of which can create new types of agents. Various self-reinforcing mechanisms lead to stronger and more stable agency. We may not even recognize the emergence of nascent agents for what they are until said agency (or coherence) becomes strong enough. For instance, many people have a hard time wrapping their head around cultural agency of any form.
Obviously none of us on here have a problem with the concept of non-human agency, but as Alex and Ben collectively point out, cultural agents depend on human agents for their very existence. Yet …
Complex Systems Symposium
Should be of interest to everyone who reads this blog. Here’s the program, here’s the website, and here’s some more info that you can’t get from either yet:
…Dear all:
Just wanted to share with you all a couple of updates for our Fall Symposium. We’re very pleased to have two invited speakers so far: John Christiansen of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Mitchell Waldrop of Nature magazine.
John is the director of the Advanced Simulation Technologies Center at ANL, and has over 30 years of modeling and simulation experience across many fields, including: meteorology, ecology, botany, anthropology, archeology, healthcare, and more. He will present some of his work on a recent NSF Grand Challenge in Biocomplexity, which created an agent-based model to study the rise and fall of Ancient Mesopotamia. He will also use this work to illustrate different hardware and software platforms, with a particular focus on the challenges on going from the desktop to HPC.
Mitch is currently the editorial