Alexander Riegler, editorial assistant of PCP, has received a three year
grant from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research, to continue his
PostDoc research at the Brussels center of PCP.
Leor Grundlinger <leor_gg@hotmail.com>, an Israeli computer scientist, has
visited the Brussels group, and decided to stay there in order to make a
PhD thesis, under the supervision of Francis Heylighen. Although the
precise theme of his research still must be specified, Leor would like to
study the analogies between transactions between people in society and the
communication between neurons in the brain. He is particularly interested
in economics, market mechanisms, collective behavior and neurophysiology.
Johan Bollen, PCP editorial assistant on sabbatical in Los Alamos, has used
the server log of PCP web to determine a matrix of association strengths
between nodes by counting the numbers of users that have travelled from one
node to another. This is equivalent to a non-interactive simulation of our
learning web approach. This matrix can then be used for spreading
activation to retrieve the nodes most strongly associated with a particular
query.
The project we submitted on "Collective Knowledge Development" has not been
retained for funding by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (because
of lack of money, basically), but still remains in the running for funding
by the university.
In spite of many delays along the road, the new layout for PCP web and the
mirror server at Los Alamos are nearing completion.
The PCP editors, F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn and V. Turchin, will have their
yearly meeting in Brussels on July 9-16, to discuss the general management
of the project, and the specific organization and content of PCP web.
A new analysis of the server log has allowed us to create an updated "hit
parade" of the most popular documents on PCP-web:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HITPARAD.html
The results are not always what you would expect, with some relatively
minor pages that are deeply buried in the PCP hierarchy getting an
unexpectedly large number of hits. This is probably due to links leading
from popular servers directly into these pages (e.g. the PCP node on
"Infinity" is directly mentioned in the Yahoo subject index), and to the
fact that pages about popular keywords (e.g. "non-verbal communication" in
our Web dictionary) are returned frequently by search engines.
Generally speaking, PCP web is quite well represented in the external links
on other websites, as can be seen from the high "authority" or "PageRank"
that PCP pages get in the new Google search engine (http://www.google.com).
Searching for typical PCP subjects (such as cybernetics, memetics, global
brain, or self-organization) on Google will produce many more PCP pages in
the top ranks than the same search on another search engine. This means
that PCP pages are considered to be authoritative by many other websites
(see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/WEBCONAN.html for more details on determining
the "authority" of web pages).
PRINCIPIA CYBERNETICA ELECTRONIC LIBRARY
The most important result of the last period was the opening of PCP's
electronic library (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/LIBRARY.html) with free books
for downloading. The library was announced by the electronic publication of
two new texts, Ashby's classic textbook "Introduction to Cybernetics" and
Heylighen's analysis of the cognitive foundations of physics,
"Representation and Change".
This announcement was greeted with several enthusiastic reactions, and a
flurry of downloads from our server. The announcement will be further
distributed on different mailing lists and newsgroups. We hope that PCP has
in this way contributed to the wider publication of cybernetics ideas, and
made it easier for interested people to study this domain on their own.
This is important especially given the few institutions where cybernetics
and systems courses can be taken at present.
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 May/June 1999.
All documents are available via http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/recent.html
* Jun 30, 1999: Ethics (updated)
* Jun 16, 1999: Table of Contents (finally up-to-date!)
* Jun 16, 1999: What are Cybernetics and Systems Science? (extended & updated)
* Jun 9, 1999: Welcome to the Principia Cybernetica Web (updated)
* Jun 8, 1999: Ordering "Representation and Change" (new!)
* Jun 8, 1999: "Representation and Change": extended summary (new!)
* Jun 8, 1999: About "Representation and Change" (updated)
* Jun 8, 1999: Principia Cybernetica Electronic Library (new!)
* Jun 8, 1999: Ashby's book "Introduction to Cybernetics" (new!)
* May 28, 1999: F. Heylighen: Bootstrapping knowledge representations: from
entailment meshes via semantic nets to learning webs, paper for the Int.
Journal of Human-Computer Studies (revised, pdf version)
* May 25, 1999: Cybernetics and Systems Journals (J. Applied Systems
Studies added)
* May 25, 1999: Links on Evolutionary Theory and Memetics (links added)
* May 25, 1999: Belgium: Overview (links added)
* May 21, 1999: Cybernetics and Systems Thinkers (links added)
* May 21, 1999: Links on Complexity, Self-organization and Artificial Life
(links added)
* May 19, 1999: papers by F. Heylighen:
- Collective Intelligence and its Implementation on the Web: algorithms to
develop a collective mental map, to be published in: Computational and
Mathematical Theory of Organizations (revised)
- Advantages and limitations of formal expression, to be published in:
Foundations of Science 4(1), 1999. (new, extended version of "Making
Thoughts Explicit")
- The Science of Self-Organization and Adaptivity, to be published in the
Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. (new!)
* May 10, 1999: the PCP-Web server has been upgraded with a machine that is
about 4 times faster.
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 May
and June. 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
There was a particularly long discussion about the machine/organism duality.
* European union and the common good - Claude Rochet
* Categorical System Theory - Don Mikulecky
* on the definition of "hardware" and "software" - Don Mikulecky
* New CPM Report: The Constructability of Artificial Intelligence - Bruce
Edmonds
* the machine/organism duality and practical considerartions - Don Mikulecky
* open systems (thermodynamically) and complexity :genericity - Don Mikulecky
* Flaws in Rosen's Philosophy (re-sent) - Jerry LR Chandler
* A small correction - Norman K. McPhail
* The physics of open systems:insight from Rosen's last book - Don Mikulecky
* NPR's report on the cosmology conference - Don Mikulecky
* Introductory Teaching Materials - Jason Foster
* "real" vs "formal" systems - Don Mikulecky
* Its about Time again - Gavin Ritz
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_________________________________________________________________________
Francis Heylighen <fheyligh@vub.ac.be> -- Center "Leo Apostel"
Free University of Brussels, Krijgskundestr. 33, 1160 Brussels, Belgium
tel +32-2-6442677; fax +32-2-6440744; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html