Complexity symposium
Description
Co-Sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute, the European Commission, and the London School of Economics.
The Santa Fe Institute is a private, non-profit, multidisciplinary research and education center, founded in 1984. Since its founding SFI has devoted itself to creating a new kind of scientific research community, pursuing emerging science. Operating as a small, visiting institution, SFI seeks to catalyze new collaborative, multidisciplinary projects that break down the barriers between the traditional disciplines, to spread its ideas and methodologies to other individuals and encourage the practical applications of its results.
EXYSTENCE is the European Complex Systems Network of Excellence, funded by the Future Emerging Technologies (FET) of the European Commission. Membership is open to both academics and business members. The series of Seminars is organised by Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly, Exystence Coordinator for Links with Industry and Government and Director, Complexity Research Programme, London School of Economics.
Welcome
Presenters
- Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly — LSE
- Ralph Dum — European Commission
- Dr Robert A. Eisenstein — SFI
Documents
PART I - Prospects for Complexity Science in Helping Solve Societal Issues
Presenters
- Moderator: Dr Robert A. Eisenstein — SFI
The nonlinear dynamics of vulnerability: how systems, whether ecosystems, or IT networks, or transmission networks for infectious diseases, respond to disturbance
Presenters
- Lord Robert May — Royal Zoology Department, University of Oxford
Description
The transmission of infection among humans or other animals, the spread of viruses or worms among computers, and the way ecosystems respond to disturbance are three examples of nonlinear dynamical systems whose behaviour depends upon the nature of the network of connections among nodes (that is individuals, computers, species, respectively). Recent and current concern about HIV/AIDS, SARS, and foot and mouth disease among livestock have prompted advances in our understanding of the interplay between network patterns and effective control measures. Separate, but ultimately related, work has recently focussed (often in the context of ‘homeland security’) on protecting IT networks from attack. Perhaps surprisingly, this work has made relatively little contact with older questions about ecosystem resilience. My talk aims to be an opinionated overview of all this.
Documents
Simulation Science and the Understanding of Large Socio-Technical Systems
Presenters
- Dr Christopher L. Barrett — Group Leader of the Basic and Applied Simulation Science Group of the Computing and Computational Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Description
There is an increasing appreciation of the centrality of complex cascades of interactions among various (psychological, social, physical, and technological) elements of human systems and our environment. Dr Barrett will introduce a perspective on foundations of interaction-based systems and interaction-based computing as the natural basis for the simulation and analysis of in large socio-technical systems. The approach is interesting theoretically and also useful in many important ways, and he will emphasize one of them: scaling practical simulations of operating civil infrastructures that involve interactions among very large numbers (106 to 1012) of heterogeneous, interacting entities.
Documents
PART II - Prospects for Complexity Science in Helping Solve Business and Technology Problems
Presenters
- Moderator: Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly — LSE
Technology and Complexity
Presenters
- Professor W. Brian Arthur — Science Board Member, Santa Fe Institute
Description
Within the collective of technology, existing elements often become building blocks that build further building blocks–further technologies. Thus Lee De Forest’s triode vacuum tube combined with other electronic elements to create the amplifier, the oscillator, the heterodyne mixer, and eventually the logic circuit. These, in their turn, became building blocks in yet further devices: transmission repeaters in telephony, radar, and early computers.
How does combination and recombination work within technology? How do higher-level technologies come into being from simpler ones? And by what dynamics does the entire collective of technology emerge from primitive elements? Prof. Arthur will discuss these questions and how they relate to complexity.
Complexity & Consumer Behaviour
Presenters
- Dr Bryan D. Gross — President and Chief Executive Officer, MPSI Systems Inc.
Description
Retail performance depends largely upon the retailer’s ability to manage the store-customer interface across all stores in a retail network; made more complex by interactions between proximal stores and consumers. Sustained retail success requires simultaneous consideration of the impact of all decisions at all points in the retail network. Simulation models have offered decades of scientific support for managing this complex environment. Optimization methods married to simulation systems now offer a further, significant improvement for managing complexities of the store-customer interface.
Documents
From the scale-free Web to Avogadro-scale Engineering
Presenters
- Professor Scott Kirkpatrick — Professor in the School of Engineering and Computer Science, Hebrew University and Exystence Network of Excellence
Documents
PART III -- Current Research & Future Directions in Complexity Science
Presenters
- Moderator: Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly — LSE
Description
Future Directions in Complexity Science at the Santa Fe Institute
Presenters
- Dr Robert A. Eisenstein — President, Santa Fe Institute
Description
During the last two decades, the essential role of complex interactions in science, government and business – and in human interactions generally – has become very widely appreciated. In parallel, the progress made in developing new analytical and computational tools has made possible some significant progress in many areas. In this talk Dr Eisenstein will outline some potential new directions for the scientific program at the Santa Fe Institute, and its connections to fundamental science, to understanding some aspects of human behavior, and to decisions regarding social policy. Prospects for international collaboration will be discussed as well.
Documents
What Did The Internet Ever Do For Us?
Presenters
- John S. Leggate — CBE, CIO, & Group Vice President, British Petroleum
Description
John Leggate will speak on how BP, a world leader in the application of digital technology to business processes, has combined its approach to innovation and learning with the connectivity and greater speed of operation afforded by the Internet and related developments, to liberate the creative energy of its people and drive the corporation to new levels of capability and performance.
The Complexity, Unity and Simplicity of Living Systems
Presenters
- Dr Geoffrey West — Distinguished Research Professor, Santa Fe Institute; Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Description
Dr. West will explore a quantitative conceptual framework for understanding many of the generic properties of living organisms from molecules and cells to ecosystems. The paradigm presented will be developed as a way of viewing many related phenomena and will include a discussion of the cardiovascular system, trees and plants, growth, aging and mortality, sleep, genome size, cities and corporate structures.
Documents
The Low Intelligence Approach to Economics: Simple Laws Relating Order Flow to Statistical Properties of Markets
Presenters
- Professor J. Doyne Farmer — McKinsey Research Professor, Santa Fe Institute
Description
While much of economics appropriately focuses on the strategic interactions of agents, there are some situations where this is dominated by other factors, such as market structure. Prof. Farmer will present a model of the continuous double auction based on zero-intelligence noise traders. This can be used to derive simple laws relating order flow to statistical properties of markets, such as volatility and the average bid-ask spread, that agree remarkably well with data from the London Stock Exchange. He will then discuss the effects of adding intelligence, simulating an ecology of arbitrage and exploring its effect on prices.
Documents
Robot Cultures and Emergent Languages
Presenters
- Dr Luc Steels — University of Brussels (VUB AI Lab) and Sony Computer Science Lab (Paris)
Description
Dr Steels will talk about how the increasing complexity of robots, and the increasing complexity and open-endedness of information technology as experienced in the Web, pushes us to adopt mechanisms whereby communication is no longer pre-programmed but based on emergent conventions and ontologies. These mechanisms are directly inspired by complex systems research and are grounded in complex systems theory.
Documents
Where Does Wealth Come From? A Complexity Economics Perspective
Presenters
- Eric Beinhocker — Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company, London, SFI Business Network
Description
One of the most stunning empirical facts in economics is the explosive growth in worldwide wealth over the past 250 years, and the related growth in the complexity of the global economy. Conventional, particularly neoclassical, economic theories have a very difficult time explaining this pattern of growth. This talk will explore what complexity science might offer in explaining this puzzle; most notably perspectives from evolutionary theory, thermodynamics, and cognitive science.
