The last two months have been relatively quiet because of the holidays, and
a lot of administrative work, such as preparing proposals for funding. Of
these proposals, it is worth mentioning a project on "Collective Knowledge
Development: elaboration of a theoretical model with applications on the
World-Wide Web", which will be submitted to the Belgian National Fund for
Scientific Research, and a proposal to DARPA provisionally entitled
"Conversations with inferential mental models", a collaboration between the
Washington-based firm, Cognitive Technologies, and some PCP people in
Brussels and Los Alamos, with partners in Berkeley and the University of
Tennessee. The first proposal wishes to investigate collective intelligence
in an evolutionary framework. The second one responds to a call for
proposals that asks for innovative visions of the future of information
technology. Our proposal applies cognitive science techniques (semantic and
connectionist networks) to support an intelligent interaction between
individuals, groups and the world-wide web, so as to build shared mental
models.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Alex Riegler, PCP assistant editor, has started up a new mailing list on
radical constructivism. If you would like to discuss the ideas of Pask,
Maturana, Varela, von Foerster, Kelly and others, you can subscribe to it
by using the form at
http://www.univie.ac.at/cognition/constructivism/list.html
The other assistant editor, Johan Bollen, will be moving in February from
Brussels to join the PCP group in Los Alamos.
The newest issue 2:2 of the Journal of Memetics: Evolutionary Models of
Information Transmission, the most extensive one yet, has been published at
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/
Robert Rosen, a systems theorist and theoretical biologist, whose ideas on
complexity, anticipatory systems, the definition of life and the modelling
relation have inspired many debates on PRNCYB-L, unfortunately has died on
Dec. 31.
After a rather quiet period, as its list of subscribers grows, the global
brain mailing list is becoming more and more active. Its archive of
messages can be consulted at
http://cfpm.org/~majordom/gbrain/thread.html
WHAT'S NEW IN PCP WEB
The following nodes in Principia Cybernetica Web have been newly created or
undergone editing. Note especially a new, beautifully illustrated, set of
nodes on
metasystem transitions in biology by Alexei Sharov. All documents are
available via
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/RECENT.html
* Nov 25, 1998: List of contributors (updated)
* Nov 25, 1998: The Origins of Life (greatly expanded)
* Nov 24, 1998: Eukaryotes: the origin of complex cells
* Nov 19, 1998: Evolutionary stability of cooperation
* Nov 19, 1998: Symbiosis as a Metasystem Transition
* Nov 19, 1998: Biological examples of MSTs
* Nov 19, 1998: Metasystem Transitions in Biology
* Nov 4, 1998: F. Heylighen: Collective intelligence and its Implementation
on the Web (paper for a special journal issue on "Socially situated
intelligence")
DISCUSSIONS ON PRNCYB-L
The following topics were announced or discussed on the mailing list (see
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/mail.html). The topic of "Genes, Memes and
Evolution" has led to a particularly lengthy and interesting discussion
about (the absence of) progress and increase of complexity in biological
and cultural evolution. The discussion involved contributions from some
non-PRNCYB members who are experts in the domain, such as Howard Pattee and
Stanley Salthe. 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
* Occam's razor - Cliff Joslyn
* Comments on John's suggestions - Jerry LR Chandler
* CFP: 7IASS-1999 "Sign Processes in Complex Systems" [fwd] - Francis
Heylighen
* Physical and Non Physical differences - Norman K. McPhail
* Group Support Systems -- Informatica CFP [fwd] - Francis Heylighen
* Re: Memes, genes and evolution;remember Feyerabend! - Don Mikulecky
* New member: Alexander Zenkin - Cliff Joslyn
* New member: Yonggin Quah - Cliff Joslyn
* Memes, genes and evolution - Luis Rocha
* NLP and cybernetics - Laurence.Millar@vuw.ac.nz
* The measurement 'problem' - Bruce Edmonds
* Re: Principia Cybernetica News - Gavin Ritz
UNSUBSCRIBING
If you want to unsubscribe from this mailing list, use the form at
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PCPNSUBS.html or send the following one line
message to the address Majordomo@listserv.vub.ac.be
unsubscribe pcp-news