======================================================================== Cybernetics in the 3rd Millennium (C3M) — Volume 9 Number 1, Feb. 2011 Alan B. Scrivener — www.well.com/~abs — mailto:abs@well.com ======================================================================== In this issue:
- Reboot
- Reading List
- Book Review: "Thinking In Systems: A Primer" (2008) by Donella H. Meadows
- 2010 In Cybernetics Roundup
- Fact-Checking Predictions for 2010
- Mailbag
- Other Stuff
- Coming Attractions
- Feature: Part Two of "If It's Just a Virtual Actor, Then Why Am I Feeling Real Emotions?"
Reboot
"Abort, retry, fail?" — DOS critical error messageWelcome to my new subscribers, and to my old subscribers I apologize for the 13-month delay since the last e-Zine issue — and a cliff-hanger too. Thank you for your patience. Now I am rebooting this 'zine, with a new focus. Since I began it in 2002 this has been mainly an outlet for me, both intellectual and emotional. My subscriber list has hovered around 150-200 persons, and my income from the Amazon Affiliates program has been a few dollars a year. My new new focus is on being more reader-friendly, doing more for YOU instead of ME. Towards this goal the coming issues will be:
- more frequent — at least every other month; possibly monthly
- shorter — if I do future long-form articles, I will serialize them
- more pertinent to cybernetics — although arguably everything is related to cybernetics, I'm pretty sure most of you didn't sign up for essays about everything
- more magazine-like — with articles, reviews and features in a tasty mix
- HTML only — I am no longer producing a text version to email out; the emails will just point to a web-based HTML version like this one
- no longer hidden — I used to try to hide the archives from Google by putting them in a hard-to-find place; it didn't work anyway, and now I've moved them to a well-linked location
Reading List
I'm trying to keep track of my reading these days, something I used to do
decades ago on 3x5 cards. Here is a partial list of books I've read in
the last two years, in approximate reverse chronological order:
"Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" (novel, 1991)
by Douglas Coupland [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031205436X/hip-20 )
"The Gum Thief" (novel, 2007) by Douglas Coupland
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596911069/hip-20 )
"Zero History" (novel, 2010) by William Gibson
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0399156828/hip-20 )
"Spook Country" (novel, 2007) by William Gibson [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0399154302/hip-20 )
"Pattern Recognition" (novel, 2005) by William Gibson [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0425198685/hip-20 )
"To Quench a Thirst: A Brief History of Water in the San Diego Region"
(2003) by Kenneth Mervis
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001836PJ8/hip-20 )
"Hotel Design: Planning and Development" (2001) by Rutes et al [unfinished]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750646071/hip-20 )
"The Wave Maker: The Story of Theme Park Pioneer George Millay and the
Creation of Seaworld, Magic Mountain and Wet 'n Wild" (2004) by Tim O'Brien
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893951081/hip-20 )
"Industrial Light & Magic: Into the Digital Realm" (1996) by Mark Cotta Vaz
and Patricia Rose Duignan
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345381521/hip-20 )
"Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers" (1988) by Martin Gardner
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/071671986X/hip-20 )
"Magic — Top Secret" (autobiography, 1949) by Jasper Maskelyne
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007J5PGS/hip-20 )
"Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age" (2004) by Duncan J. Watts [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393325423/hip-20 )
"The California Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" (1988) by David Gebhard
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811814955/hip-20 )
"Michael Graves: Compact Design Portfolio" (2002) by Julie V. Iovine
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811832511/hip-20 )
"Irving Gill, 1870 - 1936" (1958) by the Los Angeles County Museum
and the Art Center in La Jolla — text by Esther McCoy
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586854461/hip-20 )
"Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform: A Study in Modernist
Architectural Culture" (2000) by Thomas S. Hines
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580930166/hip-20 )
* "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies" (1971) by Reyner Banham [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520260155/hip-20 )
"One Day the Hodja" (parables, 1959) by Muammer Bakir
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000XPXIZQ/hip-20 )
"Breakfast At Tiffany's" (novella, 1958) by Truman Capote
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067960085X/hip-20 )
"Mojave" (short story, 1975) by Truman Capote
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/140009691X/hip-20 )
"A Christmas Memory" (short story, 1956) by Truman Capote
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067960085X/hip-20 )
"Stand On Zanzibar" (sci-fi novel, 1967) by John Brunner [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001TNYRC4/hip-20 )
* "Jennifer Government" (sci-fi novel, 2003) by Max Barry
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400030927/hip-20 )
"The Exile Kiss" (sci-fi novel, 1991) by George Alec Effinger
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/076531360X/hip-20 )
"Symmetry and the Monster: One of the Greatest Quests of Mathematics" (2006)
by Mark Ronan
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192807234/hip-20 )
* "Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water"
(1986, revised 1994) by Marc Reisner
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140178244/hip-20 )
"Drilling Through Time: 75 Years With California's Division of Oil and Gas"
(1990) by William Rintoul
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/096271240X/hip-20 )
"Agua Caliente Hot Springs: Two Mid-Century Views of a Unique Desert Oasis"
(2008) by Frederick Colbert & Marshal South [reprints from "The Desert"
magazine 1951 & 1947, annotated by Bill Worden]
( I think you can only get this at the Agua Caliente General Store
maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=10354510676379309193
&q=store+near+Agua+Caliente+County+Park,+Julian,+CA
&hl=en&dtab=0&sll=32.949665,-116.446018&sspn=0.309377,0.375048
&ie=UTF8&ll=33.116275,-116.819&spn=0,0&t=h&z=11 )
"Borrego Beginnings: Early Days in the Borrego Valley 1910 - 1960" (2001)
by Phil Brigandi
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0910805105/hip-20 )
"The Murder of Bob Crane" (1994) by Robert Graysmith
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0425189023/hip-20 )
"Freeways" (1966) by Lawrence Halpin
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0278923518/hip-20 )
"Budayeen Nights" (sci-fi short stories, 2003) by George Alec Effinger
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1930846568/hip-20 )
* "Save the Cat! The Last Book On Screenwriting You'll Ever Need" (2005) by Blake Snyder
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932907009/hip-20 )
"Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy" (1991) by Paul Zane Pilzer
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0517582112/hip-20 )
* "Thinking In Systems: A Primer" (2008) by Donella H. Meadows
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1603580557/hip-20 )
"Live! From Death Valley: Dispatches from America's Low Point" (2005)
by John Soennichsen
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1570614482/hip-20 )
"Moonshot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon" (1994)
by Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Jay Barbree, and Howard Benedict
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1570361673/hip-20 )
"The Winning of Barbara Worth" (novel, 1911) by Harold Bell Wright [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002LXPFEU/hip-20 )
"Caryatids" (sci-fi novel, 2009) by Bruce Sterling
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345460626/hip-20 )
"Inherent Vice" (novel, 2009) by Thomas Pynchon
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143117564/hip-20 )
"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" (1971) by Shunryu Suzuki
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590302672/hip-20 )
"The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches)" (novel, 1990) by Anne Rice
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345384466/hip-20 )
"The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir" (2001) by Foster Hirsch
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0306817721/hip-20 )
"The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman To Master" (2000) by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/hip-20 )
"Software Tools" (1976) by Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020103669X/hip-20 )
"The Elements of Programming Style" Second Edition (1978) by Brian W.
Kernighan and P. J. Plauger [re-read]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0070342075/hip-20 )
"The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence" (2004)
by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465043577/hip-20 )
* "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" (2007)
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb [no relation to the hit movie]
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/081297381X/hip-20 )
These are some books I am currently reading (meaning I have them on a
shelf with a bookmark in them):
"A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century" (1987) by Barbara Ward Tuchman
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345349571/hip-20 )
"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (epic poem, 1350/1970)
translated by Burton Raffel
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451531191/hip-20 )
"The Sevenfold Journey: Reclaiming Mind, Body & Spirit Through the Chakras"
(1993) by Anodea Judith and Selene Vega
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895945746/hip-20 )
"Cybernetics of Cybernetics" (1974) edited by Heinz von Foerster
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0964704412/hip-20 )
"Counterculture and Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network,
and the Rise of Digital Utopianism" (2006) by Fred Turner
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226817423/hip-20 )
"Magistger Ludi: The Glass Bead Game" (novel, 1943) by Hermann Hesse
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312278497/hip-20 )
"New Rules for Classic Games" (1992) by R. Wayne Schmittberger
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471536210/hip-20 )
"Practical Casino Math" (2005) by Robert C. Hannum and Anthony N. Cabot
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0942828534/hip-20 )
As a rule, if I manage to finish a book I probably think it's OK.
If I re-read it I think it's more than OK. Those marked with an
asterisk I found to be exemplary. I may review some of the above
at a future time. Here's one now...
Book Review: "Thinking In Systems: A Primer" (2008) by Donella H. Meadows
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler." — attributed to Albert EinstenIf you bothered to plow through the above list, you may have noticed that there are a number of post-cyberpunk novels, books on architecture, computer programming guides, and history books. Only one book that I completed is explicitly about cybernetics and systems theory: Donella "Dana" Meadows' last book, published seven years after her death. Well, I'm here to tell you that it is the best introductory book on systems theory I've ever read, eclipsing my previous top three:
- Ross Ashby's "Introduction to Cybernetics" (1966) ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001TC7UVA/hip-20 )
- Gerlad Weinberg's "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" (1975), ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633498/hip-20 )
- John Gall's "General Systemantics: An Essay On How Systems Work, and Especially How They Fail, Together With the Very First Annotated Compendium of Basic Systems Axioms: A Handbook and Ready Reference for Scientists, Engineers, Laboratory Workers, Administrators, Public Officials, Systems Analysts, etc., etc., etc., and the General Public" (1975). ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006CJKZ8/hip-20 )
a system described by Forrester in "Principles of Systems"
sample behavior of an inventory system described by Forrester in "Industrial Dynamics" (1961)( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1883823366/hip-20 )
Meadows' faucet and bathtub analogy for flow diagrams
a more complex system described by Meadows
behavior of system described by Meadows2010 In Cybernetics Roundup
To recognize the best oral presentation and paper at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics [in Istanbul, Turkey]: Hesuan Hu, Mengchu Zhou and Zhiwu Li, "Deadlock Resolution Method for Automated Manufacturing Systems Modeled with Petri Nets" — www.ieeesmc.org/award/Award_Recipients.htmlI'm sure I missed some things, but my radar picked up three interesting developments in 2010.
- Weka 3: Data Mining Software in Java Recently I was pondering something I read in the excellent book "The Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street" (2000) by Thomas Bass, ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805057579/hip-20 ) which described about how a mathematician took a machine learning program and analyzed college football stats and came up with this formula for winning sports bets: if team A has previously been beaten by team B on their home turf, and are now playing an away game against the same team, and the point spread is three or more points against them, bet on them. (I'd love to try this someday, though it requires tracking the teams, being patient, access to a sports betting facility, and some capital.) I mentioned to my friend Steve Price that I'd love to crank some other data through a variety of machine learning programs. He said, "Have you seen Weka 3?" Turns out there's a convenient, open-source, Java-based tool for doing just that, which came out of New Zealand. ( www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka ) Oh boy!
- Web3D Shakeout For it seems like decades the annual SIGGRAPH conference on computer graphics ( siggraph.org ) has held an event called "the Web3D Roundup" to deal with the vast quantities of vendors selling tools for doing interactive 3D graphics in web browsers. One hilarious aspect of the event was that the organizers handed out ping pong ball guns and silly string to the audience, and anyone caught speaking in marketing platitudes would be pelted. But the serious problem was that there were TOO MANY of these solutions, they were all proprietary and required plug-ins to downloaded by the users, and none achieved the "critical mass" to become a de facto standard (besides Flash, with its moving target of capabilities), and so progress languished. Well, the well-networked academic community that dogs this conference finally stepped in, and have produced what they claim is an open, plugin-free approach called WebGL. The ultimate plan is to get it built right into the browser, but for the interim you can get experimental versions of browsers to test. Now maybe we can get some awesome web-based data visualization going. ( www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Main_Page ) ( spidergl.org )
- Geoff Alexander and Cine16 — The Academic Film Archive of
North America (AFANA)
Back in 1996, driving around Silicon Valley one night while running
a fever, I heard a guy on a PBS radio station talking about his hobby of
collecting 16mm educational films and showing them for free in San Jose.
( www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/10.31.96/cine16-9644.html )
I called up the station and we talked about some of my favorite old physics
films like "Frames of Reference" and "Magnetic Laboratory" among others.
(Back then it was legal to talk on a cell phone while driving.) He gave
out his email address but I didn't write it down.
Later I began to think I'd dreamed the whole thing, but finally I remembered
the email address and managed to get in touch again. I only made it to
one of his events, at which I saw an excellent filmed dramatization of
"The Long Christmas Dinner: A Play in One Act" (1960) by Thornton Wilder.
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000YQP3DO/hip-20 )
But I've been on his mailing list ever since, and followed the evolution
of his non-profit, Academic Film Archive of North America (AFANA) aka Cine16.
( www.afana.org )
Geoff showed his movies for free mainly because of the Byzantine licensing
conditions that prohibited commercial use. He knew these things would fall
out of copyright someday but he feared they would be lost by then, so he was
doing double duty as a preservationist and a promoter.
Well, he's finally managed to find a way to upload them and share them over
the internet. And two of my faves, "Magnetic Laboratory" and "Frames of
Reference" can now be seen by all.
( www.archive.org/details/academic_films )
In his latest email he says:
"Consider sponsoring a film for digitization and uploading yourself. We've successfully digitized and uploaded 92 films for free viewing on the Internet Archive, thanks to your donations. Because we have no paid employees, and thanks to History San Jose's housing of our archive, virtually every dollar of your donations goes to cataloguing, preserving and uploading films for the enjoyment and appreciation of everyone. If you typically make donations to non-profits why not consider sponsoring a film for uploading? You can do it for as little as $110, you can write it off on your taxes, you'll get your own DVD, and you can pick a film that you love. Visit www.afana.org/saveafilm.htm for all the details."
What of the wonderful things we're seeing today is that so many people, inspired by these classics (I presume), are creating new, wonderful educational videos and posting them on the internet. It's a Golden Age! ( arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/ars-announces-the-science-video-contest-winners.ars )
Fact-Checking Predictions for 2010
It turns out the year 2010 has been the target of several sets of predictions
made in previous years. Let's take a look at three of them and fact-check
them with the 20-20 vision of hindsight.
- "2010: Odyssey Two" (sci-fi novel, 1982) by Arthur C. Clarke ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345413970/hip-20 ) and the movie "2010: The Year We Make Contact" (1984) directed by Peter Hyams, based on it ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004VVN8/hip-20 ) Prediction: Cold War still going strong in 2010, after some minor detente in 2001. Actual: Soviet Union has been missing since 1991. Prediction: The Walt Disney Company finally built E.P.C.O.T. — the city, not the theme park — in Orlando. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Prototype_Community_of_Tomorrow_(concept) ) Actual: The closest we got was the planned town of Celebration, 1996. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration_Fl ) Prediction: Aliens turn Jupiter into a new star. Actual: Not so much.
- "Stand on Zanzibar" (sci-fi novel, 1967) by John Brunner ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001TNYRC4/hip-20 ) Prediction: World population reaches 7 billion by May 2010 (with 2 square feet per person, enough for the world's population to "stand on Zanzibar" at 640 sq. mi.). Actual: World population 6.8 billion by May 2010 — pretty darned close (we could all stand in the 620 sq. mi. Mount Rwenzori National Park in Uganda). Prediction: U.S. population reaches 400 million by May 2010. Actual: U.S. population 308 million by May 2010 (missed by a mile). Prediction: Worldwide, 64 people a day go berserk and kill everone they can (what Brunner called "muckers" after "running amok"), so many that the news only reports stats, except in unusual cases. Actual: The rate seems to be about one a week, and the events are still reported individually (we sometimes call it "going postal"). Prediction: In the U.S. and most Western nations, cigarettes are illegal and marijuana is legal. Actual: Not yet, but we're getting there. Prediction: Psychedelics drugs are tolerated, especially designer drugs too new to be illegal; pharmacutical companies covertly make them and the government turns a blind eye. Actual: Not that I can see. Prediction: In the U.S. and most Western nations, eugenics legislation allows the government to decide who can have children and how many. Actual: No freaking way would this get any political traction. Prediction: Puerto Rico and "Isola" (the Philippines) are states 51 and 52 in the U.S. Actual: Nope. Prediction: Fidel Castro is dead. Actual: Amazingly not. Prediction: A new medium called "zock" combines spacey visuals with rock and roll audio. Actual: MTV used to play stuff like this before they switched over to reality shows. Prediction: Pop music has had complex "polyrhythms" since the 1970s. Actual: Utterly wrong; pop has kept its foxtrot beat for decades. Frank Zappa released one tune on the pastiche album "Lumpy Gravy" in an odd time signature (7/4?) which can be heard at time 2:10 through 3:40 ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=apTPXPBMBXk ) and Mason William's comedy piece "The Last Great Waltz" about a 2-legged man & 3-legged woman has its last verse in 5/4 time, but outside of "modern classical" music that nobody listens to, that's about it. Prediction: Holographic TV. Actual: Not exactly, but glasses-free 3D is here. Almost nobody's buying it yet. Prediction: "Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere" are TV characters that look like YOU. Actual: Not today, but you CAN design your own avatar on your home game console. Prediction: The affluent have mobile phones but phone booths remain. Actual: Almost everyone has a mobile phone and phone booths are nearly extinct. Prediction: Sub-orbital air travel. Actual: Not yet, but Virgin Galactic is working on it. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_galactic ) Prediction: Seat-back screens in planes. Actual: Yes. Prediction: Mid-Atlantic Mining Project (MAMP) Actual: No. Prediction: Books are starting to go out of fashion. Actual: Yes; e-books are starting to out-sell them on Amazon. Prediction: Expensive data-link encyclopedia available, but no internet and no personal computers. Actual: Way off. Prediction: A huge computer designed by other computers achieves consciousness, which is initially mistaken for a bug. Actual: Not even close. Prediction: Permanent moon base. Actual: No, alas. Prediction: It was a popular misconception that the 21st century began on 1/1/2000, which newscasters tried in vain to correct. Actual: Public misconception: yes. Newscaster correction: no. Prediction: Many westerners eschew marriage for short-term living arrangements ("bivving") with the females ("shiggies") almost always being the ones who move out when it's over. Actual: Not so formalized; many people "shack up", but marriage remains popular. (Brunner completely failed to anticipate AIDS.) All in all a fairly impressive record for a 43-year look-ahead.
- "A Mac Davis Special: Christmas 2010" (TV special, 1978) The same year as the wretched "Star Wars Holiday Special" (which definitely took the "Christ" out of "Christmas") was this little-noticed, low-budget science fiction drama set in the year 2010, which predicted that Christmas would be illegal by then, replaced by a secular "Commerce Day." Obviously we're not there now, but it was quite thought provoking, and recent trends in the "war on Christmas" are not encouraging. ( www.imdb.com/title/tt1795545 )
Mailbag
Note: If you email me regarding this 'zine, I may quote you in it!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Scrivener,
I happened upon your page at http://www.well.com/~abs/curriculum.html today.
. . .
I came across it in a search for material to pursue the field of systems
theory, and consequently (as I understand) cybernetics.
Your page offered a great deal of material and literature which I anticipate
tackling. I have recently begun Mr. Ashby's "Introduction to Cybernetics"
which I discovered shortly before your page. If you don't mind, I will offer
a brief account of myself and then my general question.
I am a student of Political Science, I hope to one day graduate but have
unfortunately become one of those 6-year undergrad statistics. Blame that
on whomever you will. However, unlike most of my fellow Political Science
students that I encounter, my interests are much broader than this particular
field. In fact, I have become rather disappointed in the field at large and
have seen the degree program as little more than intellectual exercise /
stimulation, offering little in the way of substantive material. That is to
say that Political Science hardly qualifies as a science due to its inherent
lack of coherence. My search for coherence in this field has been more
interesting than the study of Political Science itself. I have personally
taken it upon myself to learn as much about Physics, Biology, Chemistry,
Mathematics etc., as I can in order to supplement and complement my formal
studies. Through these endeavors, I have finally arrived at Systems Theory
and Cybernetics. For such a fascinating field, I have become confounded as
to why it is not more academically readily available. The very concept of
Systems Theory, though perhaps I naively place too much value on it, seems
to be the logical key to unlocking many questions in all scientific fields
— including solidifying fields which have long attempted to be scientific
(read: Social Sciences).
As someone with a very meager background in mathematics, and anything that
can formally be referred to as scientific, is there a best course of study
that you have found that one may undergo to learn this field? At current I
feel as though learning the field will happen more by accident than by formal
structure, which I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that.
I suppose to condense my question sufficiently I would ask: What measures
would you suggest a new student take to best understand this field and
apply it to other, perhaps less scientific, fields of study?
I appreciate you even reading this jolted email and would equally appreciate
any wisdom, insight, or pure facts you have to offer.
Kindly,
Justin R.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mr. R.,
. . .
If you want to learn about the application of rigor to political science, I
would recommend the following:
* "Arms and Insecurity: A Mathematical Study of the Causes and Origins of War" (1953) by L. F. Richardson
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000IP0ME6/hip-20 )
* "Conflict and Defense: A General Theory" (1962) by Kenneth Boulding
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0819171123/hip-20 )
* "Six Degrees — The Science of a Connected Age" (2003) by Duncan Watts
( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393325423/hip-20 )
* the article on "Shapley-Shubik Power Index" at Wikipedia
( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley-Shubik_power_index
None of this requires math beyond what you can do on a calculator — or
a spreadsheet.
I recommend building mathematical models in spreadsheets. Make each line
a time step. Define each line in terms of the one above. (Current line
is time T; line above is T - 1.)
Example: for a clock:
C(T) = C(T - 1) + tick_size
Growing population:
P(T) = P(T - 1) * growth_rate_per_tick
Have fun!
. . .
Best of everything,
Alan Scrivener
Peripheral Intelligence Agent
Other Stuff
Though y'all might like to know that even though I haven't written a C3M
in over year, I did write some other stuff:
- "Ron Cearns and the Society of Friends of Hobbits (S.O.F.O.H.)" ~ OR ~ "On the Prehistory of Comic-Con in the Grossmont High School Tolkien Club and Some Other Related Notes" ( www.well.com/user/abs/SOFOH/sofoh.html )
- "Something For Everyone at SIGGRAPH 2010!" ( san-diego.siggraph.org/articles/SG2010/SG2010_Something.html )
- "Something For Everyone at SIGGRAPH 2010 — Part 2: Aftermath of a Successful SIGGRAPH" ( san-diego.siggraph.org/articles/SG2010/SG2010_Aftermath.html )
Coming Attractions
In upcoming months I plan articles on:
- The 3D Solid Geometry of Bucky Fuller Buckminster Fuller was the second person, after Stewart Brand, to get me excited about systems. His "do it yourself" methodology, not unlike Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's, had him double-check everything he was taught, and lead him to make breakthroughs in geometry, engineering, design science and what we now call Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The most fundamental and revolutionary of these were his contributions to 3D solid geometry, which should have re-written the textbooks. (Blame our inflexible educational system for this omission.) I love this sharing this stuff — I find that kids and math-phobic adults especially respond to learning about the Platonic solids through the use of miniature marshmallows and toothpicks.
- Lessons Learned from Teaching Calculus and Systems Theory to a 16-year-old In C3M vol. 6 num. 1, "Everything Has To Go Somewhere ~ OR ~ Eigenvectors and You," ( http://www.well.com/~abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0601.html ) I bragged that I could teach the mathematics of systems theory, and the underlying calculus, to secondary school students if I didn't have to cover limits or deal with proofs. Well, last summer my then 16-year-old daughter, who was just finishing her junior year of high school and had no summer school plans, called my bluff, and asked me to teach the material to her. So I did. It went very well, and I kept careful notes on what I covered, so I plan to share it all with you.
- Mathematics for Computer Graphics
I serve on the executive committee of the San Diego professional chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH.
( san-diego.siggraph.org )
We are required to produce four local events each year, measured from July
to July, and by June 2010 we were down one event, so I threw together a
talk on "The Mathematics of 3D Computer Graphics: A Tutorial" thinking that
nobody would show up for such a dull topic, but at least we'd meet our quota.
( san-diego.siggraph.org/events/MCG/MCG.html )
The event announcement said:
The Mathematics of 3D Computer Graphics: A Tutorial Alan Scrivener Human Interface Prototypes based on content from his upcoming book "Garage Visualization" Alan Scrivener first learned the matrix math for 3D graphics from the University of California in 1974, before the famous "hidden line" problem was solved. His most recent use of the math was in 2010, visualizing public health data for Mindtel Corp. No advanced math knowledge is expected; the presentation will be visual and introductory, and Alan will leave you thinking "Is that all there is to matrix math?" Join us as we dig into the Xs, Ys and Zs of 3D using cheap or free tools.
Much to my surprise it was one of our better-attended events. I promised to follow up by posting some of of the source code I used in my presentation, and to date I haven't gotten around to it. My plan is to get double-use out of this material by writing up the talk and posting the source here, cross linked from the San Diego SIGGRAPH web site. Note that the matrix math used in computer graphics is extremely similar to the matrix math used in linear systems theory. - Tracking Down Supercomputer Software
Directory of Application Software for Cray Research Computers 1992 - Simulating an Inventory System With a Spreadsheet A few years back I spent a period of almost three years working for ResMed, a medical equipment manufacturer, traveling around North America installing inventory software at medical equipment dispensaries and training the staff to use it. At that same time ResMed had its own inventory issues, since all the equipment was manufactured in Australia and came to the U.S. on slow boats. Time delays like these add to to the possibility that an inventory system will have unwanted oscillations. One way to address the problem is to simulate the inventory system, and look at how various policies — on when to re-order, and how much, depending on demand — influence the system's behavior. Since I am very often asked for real-world examples of the use of cybernetics in business, I thought I would produce an article on how to use a spreadsheet program to simulate an inventory system.
Feature:
"If It's Just a Virtual Actor, Then Why Am I Feeling
Real Emotions?" (Part Two)
THE SCREAMS OF THE DYING MEMES
A meme is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. ... Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures. The British scientist Richard Dawkins introduced the word "meme" in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a basis for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, beliefs (notably religious beliefs), clothing fashion, and the technology of building arches. — Wikipedia entry on "meme"( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme ) Pulitzer prize winner Annie Dillard wrote a book about the writing process called "The Writing Life" (1990), ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060919884/hip-20 ) in which she describes writer's block as an essential tool in the writer's toolkit. She says it's a sign that something is wrong with the structure, and must be fixed before writing can resume. Well, I had writer's block on this project for a year and a day, and finally realized that my problem was I had a set of old rough drafts from 13 and 17 years ago which I needed to refer to before proceeding. I've been trying to write this story for a long time. In 1994 I sat down with my friend Will A. and had a conversation about my plans, which I recorded on a dictaphone and my lovely wife transcribed, all 41 pages. At one time I wanted to turn this into an article for WIRED. Later I was working on an article for a European tech magazine called "Wave" or "Pulse" or something, I forget — until I found out they weren't paying anything. And now here I am writing it for free after all. As I frequently tell my loved ones, the hardest thing for me about writing is the screams of the dying memes. "No, don't edit us out!" they shriek to me. (I had a whole diversion about Obler's Paradox in astronomy in my discussion of "Limits to Growth" in an earlier article which I edited out, and here it is trying to sneak back in.) Well, it's time to clear the obstruction and process this material out the door. Put on your workboots!
FIELD REPORT OF A PERIPHERAL INTELLIGENCE AGENT
"Mobility is the key to increased intelligence." — Timothy Leary, 1979 "The Intelligence Agents"( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0915238233/hip-20 ) ( www.american-buddha.com/intell.agent.toc.htm ) I finally tracked down something I've been looking for for a long time: Stewart Brand's proposal for a "Peripheral Intelligence Agency" (PIA). This was an essay that greatly influenced the course of my life. It turns out it's in his Destination-Crisis Paper for the POINT Board of Directors Submitted December 3, 1971 which is reprinted on page 128 of "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips (1974). ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0931425417/hip-20 ) The POINT foundation was created to give away the profits from the "Last Whole Earth Catalog" (which became a New York Times best-seller), ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0394709438/hip-20 ) hopefully in a way that accomplishes good things. In the proposal he says:
The only real fault I would find with most of the heroes is that they are overworked. Partly this is their own doing; partly it's due to the shortage of heroes. (Heroism is in scary repute these days because some who stood charismatically tall have been shot down. I believe they asked for it, some of them. They came to rely too completely on audience and visibility, until the vainglory showed and drew a bullet. If you sell your soul to the crowd, by and by they'll collect.) It seems to me that the best solution to dead heroes and over-worked heroes is not no heroes but more heroes. Spread the load. Spread the consciousness and responsibility. (And, as they told us infantrymen, don't bunch up all the time, you're too tempting a target.) The genesis and employment of heroes might be feasible. Damn near everyone, in this society anyhow, wants purpose, plot, and at least the possibility of audience. People will go along with almost anything that provides these for them, and eventually scuttle any scheme that denies them their own personal dramatic story. (I notice I'm going along with Robert Ardrey's proposition that the three main human drives are for identity, stimulation, and security — in that order. The desire to live a story comes under identity.) Dick Raymond favors fostering effective new traditions. In the hero department we have had for years the tradition of the hero from the ranks, the Establishment darling. This was the unlikely but plucky lad or unlikely but crafty old guy who rose to the occasion when circumstances and a desperate nation said "You! Handle it!" And we've had the tradition of the rebel hero who stood firm through the crowd's insults and bosses' deceits to finally BEAT city hall, and then quietly left the victory celebration to catch a ride on the evening freight. And sundry others. Among the storied heroes I can't recall one who studied up and carefully selected his crisis. Yet most of our real-life heroes do precisely this. To blurt out the "agency" scheme early on here, I wonder if we can nurture a demanding tradition for the subtle heroes. Imagine, please, that POINT sets in motion a, hm, Peripheral Intelligence Agency (PIA), which employs Free Agents at, say, $10,000/year with a $5,000 working budget. The Agents are hired for their resourcefulness at doing maximum good with minimum expenditure. That's minimum expenditure not only of money but of external influence generally — of personal pain, of entangling obligations, of extraneous meddling, of all the baggage that commonly clutters and defers good-doing. The Agents select their own missions and carry them out their own way. Besides gainful employment and a modest budget, PIA offers only evaluation and information. Evaluation, through the full-time Board of Review in the form of comment and satirically pompous awards. Information, about potential missions, nuances of Agent technique, and whatever else proves useful. What Agents owe the PIA is: to do elegant good (not suave or polished good, but spare good, f***ing austere good), and to report on everything they attempt. Clearly the most significant managerial matter for PIA is deciding who shall be Agents. The hiring process might be sophisticated by putting prospective Agents through a one-month-$1000 trial period. Some persons with independent income may wish to be Agents-without-salary, and they should be provided for.For my entire adult life I have thought of myself as a Peripheral Intelligence Agent (without salary), and this 'zine includes some of my field reports. As I look back on thirty years of this pro bono activity, I think one of my best moves was to introduce Steve Tice, a computer graphics entrepreneur who founded Simgraphics Engineering Corp., ( goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/product-compint-0000862228-page.html ) and Dave Warner, a PhD/MD candidate at Loma Linda University. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loma_Linda_University_School_of_Medicine ) It was some time in 1989 or 1990; none of us can remember for sure. It was a social occasion (I considered them both friends first and professional associates second), but we don't recall if it was a party, perhaps a Halloween party, or an annual event called "the Electro-Bash" that involved smashing defective electronics for cathartic release. In any event, it was at a duplex in South Pasadena owned by Tice and Ben Thompson (along with some other silent partners), where they both lived for a while before the downstairs was converted to the Simgraphics offices. A bunch of us were upstairs socializing while Steve was downstairs giving Dave a demo of a new Virtual Reality peripheral called the Data Glove. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_glove ) Both of them told me this was a pivotal event. Warner later had a team at Loma Linda that got a grant to use the device to record hand tremors from Parkinson's Disease as part of trials of medication for the disease — the first use of the glove as a medical instrument instead of as a volitional input device. It also lead to other applications of Virtual Reality (VR) in medicine, a niche field later celebrated by the conference "Medicine Meets Virtual Reality" which began in 1994. ( www.nextmed.com ) ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586034987/hip-20 ) More on this later.
OPEN HOUSE AT THE ADVENTURER'S CLUB
"Come In a Stranger, Leave a Little Stranger" — banner in front of the Adventurers Club( the-adventurers-club.typepad.com/the_adventurers_club/notes_from_disney_world ) Picture it: May, 1990. I'm in Orlando for a chaos convention ("The SIAM Conference on Dynamical Systems"), paying my own way and taking vacation time. ( www.stormingmedia.us/21/2113/A211332.html ) Dave Warner and his mentor at Loma Linda University, Dr. Douglas Will, are also there. I've already cajoled them into riding the "Body Wars" ride at Disney's EPCOT theme park, a simulated "fantastic voyage" through the human body that I'm convinced presages a future interactive ride through your own body based on medical scans. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_wars ) The other "must-see" item on my list is the Adventurers Club at Disney's nightclub complex, Pleasure Island. Dave goes with me, and in addition to the Adventurer's Club we tour all of the clubs in the complex: the '60's surf-rock theme one, the pretentious disco one, the country western one, and the '80s punk rock theme one: The Cage, which lasted from 1989 to 1992. (There seems to be no photographic record of it on the web.) That seems to be Dave's favorite, and I like it a lot, too. It has ducts, like in the movie "Brazil" (1985), ( www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0783225903/hip-20 ) in a big tangle, with little TV screens on the ends, and I believe that the first time we walk in the Nina Hagen video "New York New York" is playing, displayed on them all. ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=CST7XOxw4Dk ) But soon I peel off to return to the AC, while Dave stays to dance in the Cage. As I mentioned last time, my friend Bob B. told me to check out the club because of its talking masks on the walls, similar to a prank I'd told him once I wanted to play on guests to my home Tiki Room.
aviator Hathaway Brown gives a tour of the mask room
AVIATOR: Raise your right hand and repeat after me. *Cough.* AUDIENCE: *Cough.* AVIATOR: Stop that! AUDIENCE: Stop that!...and so on. It happens every time. Sometimes they do improv.
CURATOR: Where are you from, madame? GUEST: Atlantic City. CURATOR: I'm sorry? GUEST: Atlantic City, it's in New Jersey. CURATOR: Oh, I heard you; I'm just sorry.Over time, being in this environment changes me. I become friendlier, and wittier. I get over my normal shyness in bars. I realize this place is great for business travelers. It's about camradarie, "hail fellow well met," and not a "meet market" like most every other bar I've been in. At one point I take a copy of the day's newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel, and cut eye holes in the Os.
Orlando Sentinel from Saturday May 12, 1990 with eye-holesTO BE CONTINUED...
Last update: 11-Feb-2011