New member: Tom Vest

Cliff Joslyn (cjoslyn@BINGHAMTON.EDU)
Fri, 25 Sep 1998 18:07:11 -0400


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To: cjoslyn@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
From: "L. Thomas Vest, Jr." <vest@scf.usc.edu>
Subject: PRNCYB-L mailing list

Name:

Tom Vest

Email address:

vest@chaph.usc.edu

URL of home page:

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~vest/ (uninformative)

Postal address:

8624 De Soto Ave., #133

Canoga park, CA

91304

Phone:

(818) 772-7763

(818) 773-2038

Fax: (818) 349-2910

Affiliations:

1.USC School of International Relations (ABD/PhD Candidate)

2. Conflict Early Warning Systems (Project Specialist, ISSC/Carnegie
Corporation/CCPDC Project)

3. Santa Monica College Center for Global Culture and Commerce (Project
Developer -- new department)

4. Pacific Council on International Policy (urban economist, former
Project Assistant, "Southern California's International Connections"
project)

5. Swarm User's Group (four visits to SFI for cultural modeling, GIS,
and Swarm development conferences, 1995-1998).

How did you hear about PCP?

online research

Please take at least one page to describe your work and how it might
relate to PCP:

1. Job: Currently principal developer of a new department at Santa
Monica College, one which will offer courses and vocational training
for international trade in media, services, and intellectual property,
e.g., "International Media Marketing and Development," "Surevey of the
Global Information Economy," etc.

2. Research: PhD core exams in international political economy,
international media and communications. Recent articles include:
"Leapfrogging the Future? Information Infrastructure Choices and
Information Industry Consequences in Asia," in _Pacific
Telecommunciations Review_ (April, 1998).

3. Dissertation: "The Cosmopolitan Turn: Globalization and Cultural
Change / Lessons from Los Angeles and the Pacific Rim"

Principal readers: Hayward R. Alker, McCone Professor of International
Relations, USC

and Stephen E. Toulmin, USC Luce Professor of Humanities and 1997 NEH
Jefferson Lecturer

Abstract:

<fontfamily><param>Times</param>Questions about the impact of cultural
factors on aggregate economic outcomes

have been extensively researched in several disciplines, but
institutional, methodological,

and technological impediments have conspired to keep insights from
these research

programs segregated. In combination, these diverse insights suggest a
novel approach to

operationalizing cultural variation in terms of two dimensions,
<italic>recognition</italic> and<italic>

responsibility</italic>. These dimensions represent, respectively, the
synthesis and parametric

representation of theoretical and empirical debates pitting (a)
"modernists" against

"postmodernists" and (b) "liberals" against "communitarians." Cultural
groups are

assigned values in both of these dimensions based on a comparison of
social and

economic data drawn from (relatively) monocultural home environments.
Parameter

values are then tested against evidence of economic performance in
interactive,

multicultural settings, with the city of Los Angeles serving as the
primary test

environment. Using SWARM, a multi-agent computer modeling platform
developed at

the Santa Fe Institute, temporal variations in spatial and aggregate
economic behavior at

the metropolitan level are revealed as emergent phenomena arising from
the dynamic

interaction and reciprocal influence of groups with different sets of
cultural attributes.

Using parameter values that are shown to be plausible individual-level
determinants of

aggregate level social and economic behavior in both mono- and
multi-cultural settings,

simulation results are tested for distributional and relational
equivalence against empirical

data on the Los Angeles five-county area. Based on the values that
meet these tests,

alternative trajectories of future cultural evolution are simulated
using the SWARM

platform. These simulations are expected to shed some empirical light
on the debate

between communitarian, cosmopolitan, and critical theorists about the
character of social

life in an increasingly integrated global economy.</fontfamily>

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L. Thomas Vest, Jr.

SMC Institute of Int'l Trade

Conflict Early Warning Systems

& USC School of Int'l Relations

vest@chaph.usc.edu

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~vest/

Fax (818) 349-2910

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