As could be expected, there was not much activity during the summer months.
As announced earlier, the PCP office has moved to a different building
within the Free University of Brussels, and is now housed together with the
associated Center Leo Apostel. New phone, fax, mail etc. addresses are
listed on PCP's masthead (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MASTHEAD.html). The move
of the project's web server to the new physical location, which is
connected to the network by a microwave antenna, went surprisingly
smoothly. An increase in the number of system crashes after the move seems
now to have been solved by updating the network software.
ASSOCIATED GROUPS
The opening up of the mailing list of the Global Brain Group to selected
non-members has produced a lot of additional discussions. About a dozen new
subscribers with diverse backgrounds have joined the list. The archive of
messages can be consulted at http://cfpm.org/~majordom/gbrain/
During a stay in Jan's summer house in the (French) Provence, Jan Bernheim
and Francis Heylighen have further developed their ideas for a study group
that would focus on an evolutionary analysis of social progress. It starts
from the observation that practically all indicators for average quality of
life (wealth, life expectancy, level of education, equality, democracy,
literacy, IQ, life satisfaction, ...) have undergone a spectacular increase
during the last half century. ( see
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CLEA/Groups/Progress.html). This undeniable
progress for humanity as a whole stands in sharp contrast with the
prevailing pessimism of many commentators or the relativism of the
postmodernists. The main aim of the group is to analyse these trends
critically, and to explain them on the basis of evolutionary principles.
This may lead to practical and ethical guidelines for future developments.
This group would be associated with PCP, in a way similar to the "Global
Brain Group". This means that the group works on a more specific subject
within the larger evolutionary-systemic world view which PCP is developing,
thus providing a more specialised focus, while including both PCP members
and others. People interested in participating in this study group may
contact Francis Heylighen <fheyligh@vub.ac.be>.
WHAT'S NEW IN PCP WEB
The following nodes in Principia Cybernetica Web have undergone substantive
editing, or have been newly added during the months of July and August,
1997. All documents are available via http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/recent.html
* Aug 11, 1997: Cybernetics and Systems Thinkers (links on Miller added)
* Aug 8, 1997: Belgium: Overview (links added)
* Aug 4, 1997: Basic References on the Global Brain / Superorganism (links
added)
* Jul 25, 1997: Heylighen F. (1997): "Bootstrapping knowledge
representations: from entailment meshes via semantic nets to learning
webs", paper for the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (new!)
* Jul 23, 1997: About Francis Heylighen (new address)
* Jul 17, 1997: Cybernetics and Systems Thinkers (von Glasersfeld & other
links added)
* Jul 17, 1997: Links on Cognitive Science and AI (links added)
* Jul 16, 1997: Links on Evolutionary Theory and Memetics (links added)
* Jul 14, 1997: The Global Brain Group (updated)
* Jul 7, 1997: Occam's Razor (links added)
* Jul 7, 1997: Metasystem Transition Theory (completely rewritten)
* Jul 7, 1997: Bibliography on Principia Cybernetica (papers added)
* Jul 7, 1997: The Social Superorganism and its Global Brain (updated)
* Jul 2, 1997: Methodology for the Development of MSTT (new!)
DISCUSSIONS ON PRNCYB-L
The following topics were announced or discussed on the PRNCYB-L mailing
list (see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/mail.html) during the months of July
and August. The full text of all original messages and replies is available
via the PRNCYB-L archive:
http://www.fmb.mmu.ac.uk/~bruce/PRNCYB-L/thread.html
* Quantity, quality - Henry COHEN
* CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT ANZSYS-97 (fwd) - E. Andres Garcia
* Complexity and Management Mail list (fwd) - Cliff Joslyn
* Dynamics of systems - Henry COHEN
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____________________NEW_ADDRESS_________________________________________
Dr. Francis Heylighen, Systems Researcher fheyligh@vub.ac.be
CLEA, Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
Tel +32-2-6442677; Fax +32-2-6440744; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html