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01. Re: Fungible computons (Tim Boykett)
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Date: 14 Jun 1998 12:42:25 -0400
From: tim@bruckner.stoch.uni-linz.ac.at (Tim Boykett)
Subject: Re: Fungible computons


More Fungibility

Reading Geo's stuff here, seeing a connection with what Cris Swart
(who I don't think is on the list, though Geert mentioned him in the
preceding emails that bounced around) and his ideas.

>On still another track, there is an effort afoot here at the AI lab to
>write programs for what they call an "amorphous" model of computation:
>Unsynchronized, blind, unreliable, identitiless processors, randomly
>distributed in a communication space. Imagine a 3D crowd of people
>in the dark. All they can do is yell and hope someone hears them.
>The only thing they know initially is what their instructions are, and
>that (probably) everyone else has the same set of instructions.
>
>Now, the question is: What kinds of things can you do with such a
>simple computational model? Some of the results obtained so far are
>quite impressive, given the wimpiness of the model: Reliably point-to-
>point communication, local clock synchronization by a "firefly"
>algorithm, distance measurement, local curvature measurement, and
>production of various biologically and electronically relevant
>structures, to give a short list.

Relating to Cris' idea of computation that is accessible to
many people, computation that is amorphousm, this resonates.
Perhaps more interestingly, at least from a completely different
angle that really quite interests me, here we are dealing with
the sort of computational structures that can be constructed in
a unreliable, amorphous, irregular and error prone environment.

Looking at the point of view that I have come across ascribed
to Bruce Sterling, that economics is a vast, distributed computation
that pertains to determine (i.e. calculate) the value of objects,
at least the values that people are prepared to pay for these
things, there is some connection. There is a great deal of
talk about the organisation of society, the way things evolve
or are created, structures and their effects, optimal
ways of organising things. Much of this relies on computational
and other metaphors from games, the military, sports.

This seems to me to relate heavily with the ideas that Geo
is bringing up here. I don't know how many times I have been
told that various forms of society that do not match the model
we currently suffer from are infeasible and impossible. It is
a question that arises repeatedly, methods of organisation that
hold structure, that are resilient. Yet that also are not
completely unstructured dog-eat-dog structures. These sorts of
investigations into how much structure can arise or be created
in loose, non-hierarchical systems, I wonder if these can be
turned into results that help tell us what is possible in terms
of other methods to organise small or medium sized groups of
people to get things done.

I'm sure the curvature of space or distance measurement is
not the sort of thing that some loose network of people is
interested in finding out about itself, but with suitable
metaphorification (is that a word?), it might be a tool.
And mentioning hi-tech research in those endless arguments
about why you dont want to get a job witha boss or be a boss
yourself might help shut up those annoying pedants with
no imagination.

The sentence:
>The only thing they know initially is what their instructions are, and
>that (probably) everyone else has the same set of instructions.
above is interesting, in that it seems to imply that a
sense of common instructions is important. To make the whole thing
less Minsky-Dennett-esque, to say that a sense of common
points of view and predelictions, preferences, ideas
and ways of dealing with each other is important for such
an unstructured yet functional system. Perhaps this is why
the pedants can't get it, they don't have the correct
computational or communicative primitives.

> Email me for pointers to the
>web page.

Please forward some here!

Cheers all,

tim

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