Agent Compromises

Suppose you want a set of software agents to solve something using genetic algorithms. There are tradeoffs involved here.

The more dumber your agents are, the more you need them in quantity and the more time you need.
The more slicker/smarter the agents are, the lesser quantity you need and the lesser time you need.

Keeping 'diseconomies of scale' on the side, in the dumb agent scenarios, the more you have them the better.

However, it seems intuitively that with slicker agents only so many can solve a problem efficiently and after a while quantity makes on difference on the efficiency of the problem solving activity. Too many cooks spoil the broth in the scenario of smarter agents I guess.

Icosystem web : A company that uses emergence

These guys work with in emergence.

Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson saying exactly what I said in some post about CPUs below.

"but our brains may be skewed to look at things in top-down ways, because we grew up as social, hierarchical primates, or whatever the evolutionary psychology explanation of it is. You have to sometimes kind of push your head to think about things in an emergent way, or in a bottom-up way. Once you do it, it can be very illuminating."

Emergence

http://llk.media.mit.edu/projects/emergence/contents.html

All about emergence.

Fallacy of division -

Important fallacy to keep in mind.

The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world - Author Bios

So, IBM is taking emergence v seriously.
Duh.

Google needs to get its act together

Google ought to take algorithm design out of its rear end and focus on user-interface. Google's problem is too much intformation. It needs to create sets on search terms on the run and allow the user to go top-down on the sets.

A9.com is going to smack google if google doesn't get in the game of a better interface. Simple interface is a good philosophy but it is too simple.

Programming in schools

I'm susrprised to realize that computer programming is not part of normal, regular school curriculum anywhere. Math is taught as part of regular curriculum. So are other useful thinking skills, but why not computer programming?

There could be multiple reasons:

1- Stereotype that programming is geeky and techie and should thus be left for the geeky.
2- The old-fashioned curriculum developers do not know the value of knowing the art of programming.
3- Programming is a hard activity to learn. But can be learned like Algebra.

I don't work in programming anymore but I use the algorithmic design principles and way of thinking all the time. Programming, even if you are not a good programmer, teaches to think, to solve a problem proactively and to keep an eye on the big picture. It teaches one to manage resources and design processes that can be used in other fields. I use these principles at work. What I do, would have been far more inefficient if I didn't have a background in computer programming.

Research Halt

Seems like research and developement on web has stopped. Meaning, we are stuck at html and that is it. I guess it's because of hacking and virus and all. Funny. MS introduces their own platform dependent ActiveX controls and now the latest XP SP2 does not allow ActiveX to run without explicit permission!

It makes observational as well as business sense to assert that MS withholds innovation and improvements in its products so that they could be part of the next upcoming releases. So they are stuck in the business model until web becomes so fast and secure that MS can simply rent its software to use.

But then the recent 'home theater' fad looks interesting. However, it does not contain enough value to be a major paradigm shift. I can play my mp3s on my TV. Humbug.

Submarine Patent

Submarine Patent

Didn't know it was a big biz.

http://www.internetnews.com/index.php/21231

Good-Tutorials

Good-Tutorials

Mindjet: Buy This!

Mindjet: Sample Maps

Suprt cool software. Need to buy it. Lovin' its GNU counterpart but that ain't this pretty.

Visual/Mind Mapping Blog

Human brain does not store information as a linear series of strings. It stores the information as maps and schemas.

Mindmaps come very naturally to some, including me. It is a great visual tool to big-picture-see the relationships between concepts.

We need a blog that connects different categories as links and edges and creates a mind map in realtime. The mindmap is best generated via flash, but it can also be Java. But flash is more secure and is less likely to be killed by anti-spywares. A good navigation system on the flash map would also be desirable.

Memletics

http://www.learning-styles-online.com/inventory/Memletics-Learning-Styles-Inventory.pdf

Sounds interesting.

Rethinking Centralization

So apparently humans have a hard time understanding that a perfect functional and normal system can exist without any centralized guidance/authority. Being raised in an environment where command structures exit, the things we create have centralization as the basic premises.

E.g. computers are built on the notion of centralization, i.e., Central Processing Unit. At the hardware level, Control Unit in the CPU controls and executes commands. At software level we have Operating Systems controlling and coordinating program resources.

All of our computing efforts need to be redesigned outside the box of centralized control. The neurones somehow work together, doing massive multi-parallel processing no computers can do today. We need to redesign computers with emergence in mind.

What is Systems Theory?

What is Systems Theory?

This link is the godfather of info on systems theory.

Cynefin

E:CO - Related Books

E:CO - Related Books

Amazon.com: Books: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

Amazon.com: Books: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

Amazon.com: Books: Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order

Amazon.com: Books: Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order

Eugene Savov - Author of the book Theory of Interaction - The Simplest Explanation of Everything

Eugene Savov - Author of the book Theory of Interaction - The Simplest Explanation of Everything

Looks like its worth reading.

[Page 1] Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science | Online

Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" has an online version.

http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html

GPS with palm pilot

Pharos services home

This is what you need for New York.

Temporal Logic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_logic

Need to explore this further. Has to be related to computing.

Good linux firewall Coyote linux.

http://www.coyotelinux.com/downloads/channel.php?ChannelID=5

http://microsoft.toddverbeek.com/phttpd.html

http://microsoft.toddverbeek.com/phttpd.html

webserv

http://instantservers.com/downloads.html#Anchor-MiniPorta-54776

Vectors and Emergence

Going back to the rhetoric, why does emergence exist? Or, how can you design a system that produces a desirable emergence?

Please don't be fooled by the tiny length of the above question. If you can design a decentralized adaptive system that produces the emergence you seek, you can create any type of team you want, any type of economy you want and possibly rule the stock markets.

I have at the moment no clue why emergence exists. But there should be some basic structural rules.

Does emergence exist in the interaction of two vectors? (Math vectors, not the data-struc vectors).

The resultant of two forces acting on an object depends on the magnitude of the force and the angle between the forces.
What does that tell me? What is the deal with the angle? Why does the angle affect the outcome?
Well, the angle determines whether the energy is being used in one direction or is cancelling the opposite source.

So in emergence, there is a concept of cancellation, which, du'h, is nothing new.

Brother's question worth blogging.

"IS CAPACITY AND YIELD MANAGEMENT IN COMBINATION WITH A CONSERVATIVE INVESTMENT STRATEGY THE ROAD TO SUSTAINED PROFITABILITY?"

Yes. Absolutely yes. Especially true for young budding markets. A business launches a gr8 marketing campaign, gets loads of response, quickly hires loads of staff to keep up with the demand. Soon the response drops, market saturates and you have idleworkers creating overhead.

The scenario does produce profits but only as a spike in the graphs. To achieve sustained profitability, some businesses need to conserve their investment strategy/marketing (like in my example) and charge variable pricing to various customers depending on the elasticity ofthe segment. This, from system's theory framework, can be aninteresting problem to solve.

Linux vs. MS

Many people misunderstand the Linux vs. Microsoft competition. First, Linux vs.Microsoft and Microsoft vs.Linux is not the same.

Second, MS is competing against linux but linux is not competing with MS. You see, MS is a coherent, structured, topdown, centralized legal entity. But linux is a fluid, dynamic and decentralized system. MS is a for-profit entity but linux is not written with that perspective.


Sure MS is competiting with linux, but, by and large, it is also competing with the notion of free software. Sure, MS is competing with every linux provider. Sure, Suse is competing against MS. (Suse is a linux provider but it is not linux itself). But Suse competing with MS does not imply linux vs. MS. It is important to realize this.

MS is aggressive about market share. Linux is not aggressive about market share. Different linux distros are aggressive about market share. But even if all the linux distros disappear, linux will live.

Because of the way linux and open source community just exists, they will never disappear. Opensource will remain a thorn on MS's side for years to come.

Meme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another new concept. Not strong enough to be a framework yet, but interesting.

Spiral Dynamics

Learnt a new term: Spiral Dynamics.

So far, doesn't look like phoney science. Apparently started by Dr. Clare W. Graves. He says:

The psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher order systems as man's existential problems change.

Looks like Mr. Clare found some pattern in emergent systems.

Runtime, realtime, user-defined, user-friendly navbar

First, the framework:

Websites are created via two major processes. One, a person or team plans and then designs. Second, the website is not planned, it just happens on its own. Like this blog or slashdot.org.

For a decentralized information bank, such as this blog, we need a real time navigation system. Here is what I mean,

Suppose I want my friend Andy to read all of my posts related to systems theory. Although I have rambled all over the board, it is only after that you read my posts in a certain order can you understand what I'm saying. So I want to create a navigation system that is easy to create, and lets my friend hop across postings via a hyper link.

The 'next' and 'previous' hyperlink is a subset of what I'm saying, except that this form of navigation is mostly design-time. Ofcourse, it is a great way to organize pics and sell ecommerce.

How can I easily create a hyperlink navigation system on a blog that helps a user navigate through the site in an arbitrary order??

Making it more interesting (thank you system's theory!), how can a group of 1000s of reader create optimal paths around a blog or site and as a result come up with the most optimum for understanding?

Well, actually they don't have to create any optimal path. You see, create a seperate section in the blog and call it 'routes'. Here anyone can post the best navigation path to explore the information in a huge blog. Once you have thousands of navigation paths, the software publishes the top ten most heavily recommended. This is a good way to 'harvest' knowledge from an other haphazard system.

Hey, you can do the same thing with the internet! So how about creating a portal where different users can post different paths, inorder to fully understand something, anything, any subject.
But how do you let the users post optimal paths? How do you motivate people? Do something like woot.com. One topic/day. And anyone can come in, without registration or anything, and recommend the best set of links, read in the best order (we can turn on and off the order feature) needed to explore a subject. Once you get a lot of spam, which you eventually will, let the users rank other paths. The system will naturally select the highest rated paths for anyone to explore.

People love to help and communicate, me inclusive!

SK.
PS: Oh! Google's philosophy of 'democracy works on the web' is nothing more than the negative/positive feedback in a system called the internet!

Emergence

Emergence: The connected lives of cities, software and brains has now been determined to be the most influential book of 2004, to me, ofcourse.

Not that the book talks about geeky-stuff, but because it has really implanted a fundamentally new framework. The framework of systems theory.

ST is most of the times studied under electrical engineering and graph theory of computer science. Oh the fallacy of keeping such a wide and overreaching concept in limited amount of fields!

ST is also the most influential concept learnt in 2004.

Brain states

So apparently I have two 'brain states'.
In one state my mind just starts spilling ideas and thoughts uncontrolled. It can happen in an ideation state at work or while driving or reading a book or something. I think at this stage it's best for me to not to analyze what my mind is producing...to just let it come out and figure out a way to capture it. My wife usually helps in this regard. Like driving somewhere I had an idea which I was thinking out loud. She recorded it in my cell phone memo.

The other state is when I'm 'dividing and conquering' or analyzing. I don't remember a lot about this stage. But here I can get 'very analytical', as my boss puts it. Definitely need to capture ideas there too..

I need another state: the learning state. Unlike most people, I learn facts the slowest. And unlike most people I learn to use concepts fastest.

Ideas drive the world. There are plenty of 'do-ers' but not enough 'thinkers'.

Song Meanings at Songfacts

Song Meanings at Songfacts

Want to find out who sang which version of your fav song first?

The Ideal Blogging Software

What does an ideal blogging software entail for me?
As always, it depends on the intended use, or, the underlying framework.

I don't blog for publicity. Only a handful of you are reading this. My blog is a braindump of the ideas that I had in my mind at the time. Naturally, I need a blog that can categorize my ideas under one section and allow me to export them so that I may write a book.

Second, the blog needs to be cheap. I want to pay $$$/yr, perhaps just one time.

Third, the blog needs to hold audio/video as well.

Fourth, the blog should be neat looking.

Fifth, I should be able to blog by sending an email, also identifying the category to which the post should belong.

Sixth, let friends comment.

Seventh, people like myself use a blog to build ideas. Like I'm writing about systems theory as I'm understanding it. Naturally, my blog at the bottom would contain the basics and the one's on the top, the advanced concepts. Hence I should be able to view a blog in the reverse order.

We can make blogging more interesting. How about adding abstraction at the user-level? The user can view the blog entries as blocks with connecting lines and move around the line to get the most desirable relationship. Ok, this thought is fairly new and I have no clue what I'm talking about.

Seventh, let friends have their own blog on my server.

Exploring this issue further.

Blogging

Many self-appointed pundits claim that blogging the next big thing or that like television and radio, it is the next big whatever..you know what I mean.

Anyway, to support their assertion they give examples of tsunami relief and recent elections. Those are a handful of examples. Only those handful of instances deserve the applaud?

As usual, the pundits forgot about the 'emergence' aspect of an adaptive, self-evolving system. The blogging community is a system. Any adaptive system, in order to grow, needs its constituents to communicate with each other.

Blogging is the next big step in improving the communication within an adaptive system we call humanity. So perhaps, now that communication is getting better the system will prosper? Perhaps, world peace is on its way?

Thought I'd leave us with a pleasant thought :-)

opensourceCMS.com

opensourceCMS.com

on blogging

Consider the following thought process:

- I use a blogging software to 'brain dump' ideas over a year. So, in about a year I would have 100s of posts related to different subjects like AI, thinking, business, self-actualization etc.

Now I want to view only the thoughts on one subject, or view all of my thoughts in one subject together, or export thoughts on one subject to txt format.

Would blogger let me do that?

information

Isn't it truly remarkable how information has become such an important token/currency in our lives??
Even back in the day, when mankind was livin' in caves, information was important. Like, there's a lion sitting in the bushes so it's best to run away. Conversely, information lilke this is also important to animals. Animals, ants use various means to capture information. Sound, smell, and for us humans electric signals etc.
We did multiple marketing projects recently and the result of the entire thing could fit on one paper/spreadsheet! We spent time and resources to acquire information that fits on one paper! We could have written that information on the paper ourselves too. But why wouldn't we care about that information?
Becuase it would not have been validated.
So it seems like that information acquried must be validated. Formal religion goes out the window.

google buying orkut

So why did google buy orkut?
Ans: To study a complex adaptive system where the individual consituents are intelligent and unpredictable!!
Of course, google can easily study a system where the individual constituents are predictable and dumb like a computer network, internet, etc.

So one can say, that to google, a member in orkus is a node and its friendship is a link. Hence orkus is meant to be a giant research study of a graph. I'm really curious to find out what google has discovered. Do humans, despite their unpredictible nature, behave like any other system as a whole?

This is the million dollar question.

Understanding systems theory

So, if you look at the behaviour of the individual, how can you predict the behvaiour of the whole? Most people tend to use the framework of things 'averagning out' or 'cancelling each other' or 'one behaviour will be magnified', etc.
But if you look at an ant's colony, the colony as a whole shows far more complicated behavior than an individual ant. If you merely add the behavior of an individual ant, the resultant colony does not look like an actual colony.
Similarly, an individual neuron only knows how to interact with the neighbouring neurons. Yet the resulting network produces the human brain and its remarkable intelligence.
I believe the word used to described this is 'synergy'. Has anyone investigated this issue further?

What conditions in a system lead to the emergence of synergy? This is the million $ question I will be investigating this year.

Conversely, how can u use system's theory's principles in marketing? Like, if associations are 'risk-aversive', would the set of associations be merely risk aversive or possibly more, like an ant colony?

I gotto explore systems theory in further detail and develop this v relevant and impt framework.

new kind of geometry

geometry usually describes the length of a side or something. Sometimes it talks qualitatively about sides, like talks about isoceles triangles, etc.
can we create a geometry that takes it one step further? like one side is 2wice as long as the other?
ooops! we can! using algenbra. :-(
previous idea has also been already done.

website on a dynamic IP

so how can i use my home computer, with a cable internet with dynamic IP to host my own website?
Pt network solution to vendor.
Vendor redirects IP as soon as my dynamic IP is renewed.

frameworks

everything we see and think about is driven through a framework of some sort.

so if u can change framekwork for same information you develop new perspectives. conversely, is there any 'framework developing' information? are frameworks just moral codes in their hearts?

the more you know the more frameworks u can develop. frameworks can be:

-morals
-questions asked
-strategic thinking. etc.

2004 new year resolution

Quit smoking. Had last smoke outside on Dec 31st. Had hiccups! With chai.

Start cardio workout. Maybe bicycle in the morning.

Loose weight training.

Reduce coffee.

Focus.
Read more.
Become an expert in B2B marketing.

2004 just ended

2004 just ended. what did i think of it? what did i learn? do i know enough to 'brain dump' the history of 2004, given that i read a lot?