Good questions
Maybe the dreaded left brain right brain synopsis, men being
predominantly on the left with la femme on the right
As our technology industry is moving more and more to conceptual right
brained thinking this is becoming a huge challenge, dare one say " male
right brain blindness '
We are using parametric technology that uses reams of feedback from the
REAL world in order to visualize " what REALLY is " and major road
blocks we see are the individuals sitting on the safe side of the
monitor very comfortable in the abstract world forgetting completely
that its only a REPRESENTATION of a REAL world. Architects sans
Calatrava and Gehry love this void space with the disastrous
consequences we see daily
Biomimicry as you so rightly identified is closely in tune with natural
senses and indeed is impossible to understand unless these same senses
are WIDE open and avatar or agent just doesn't get you there ( I haven't
seen Wal-E yet and will report back. )
The scariest representation, I have seen, re this issue is Bill
McDonough's speech at TED on " How is is possible that engineers and
designers could create efficient mass murder killing machines like
concentration camps (invented by the British in the Boar war in South
Africa ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwWWFQ2tiNY Simple they used
abstract models and designs to distance themselves from the blood and
gore, no doubt with Strauss resonating nicely in the background.
Here is another info piece on the same issue with school designs
http://www.ideapete.com/gwendolyn.htm
This is the same subject that scared me regarding the comments at last
Fridays lecture at SFI " Computational thinking means we do not have to
worry about what is we can target whats desired and model that "
Totally Orwellian
There is an excellent book on this paradigm by a local SF ( Thats Santa
Fe not science fiction although we who live here often get confused )
author George Johnson called Fire in the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Mind-Science-Faith-Search/dp/067974021X with
the brilliant LANL scientists charging ahead with the left agent brain
and the local Indians perfectly content in the resonant harmonic
mystical beliefs that touched their soul and how the scientists are
stunned when they get to the quantum and nano level to find whose
philosophy REALLY works
Cannot wait for Ann's SapphoSocratic sequel, keep it rolling
( : ( : pete
Peter Baston
*IDEAS*
/www.ideapete.com/ <http://www.ideapete.com/>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Topics:
1. Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry (Ann Racuya-Robbins)
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Subject:
[FRIAM] Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry
From:
"Ann Racuya-Robbins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:
Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:26:54 -0600
To:
<[email protected]>
To:
<[email protected]>
I have noticed that often more men are interested in Agent Based
Modeling than women while more women are interested in Biomimicry than
men. I am wondering why this is? I would like to put out this question
to others.
Both ABM and Biomimicry have much to offer. To me Agent Based Modeling
takes a very distant view of dynamic processes, like a five mile high
view. This allows a broader view and greater scope. Individual
behavior becomes a matter of probabilities. Biomimicry on the other
hand is a whole mind body empathic, sympathic, compathic relationship
with living beings as species and individuals. By copying or mimicking
living beings, probabilities are not required because copying existing
life behavior and physical properties is highly specific in design.
While vast, the number of possible design solutions is bounded by what
can live. What can live also contains an ethical dimension that
grounds and precepts possibilities. In Agent Based Modeling the death
of individuals or groups is abstracted to be expressed as parameters
emerge and recede within the model. To a large extent, in Biomimicry
the death of a species or individual life is the ultimate determinant
of which biological qualities to mimic.
I sense that the Agent Based Modeling approach with its roots in
western mathematics carries forward some of the difficulties and even
cul de sacs of western intellectual life and philosophy. Like imposing
platonic solid forms on the world, there are important similarities
that are revealed---a common language developed for qualities of the
physical world. But no individual contains or expresses these
qualities except in often large and varying degrees of
approximation. It can be said that these entities like platonic solids
and other mathematical systems such as Agent Based Modeling are not
alive nor more importantly cannot live. Of course to this extent they
cannot die either which has its benefits.
It seems to me that we need a deeper integration of approaches that
are outside the body but return to reside in the living and in the
living body.
I would like to propose a SapphoSocratic approach. But I will leave
this for another message since this one has become rather long already.
Ann Racuya-Robbins
Founder and CEO
World Knowledge Bank®
https://www.wkbank.com/knowledge/Agent_Based_Modeling_and_Biomimicry
https://www.wkbank.com <https://www.wkbank.com/>
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