Thank you for your email and your generous offer. I have looked at Tim Weavers website http://primamateria.org/index.html and feel a kinship and resonance with his work. I would be delighted to be a complementary speaker.
It is because I think the internet coupled with technological innovations and the human capacity for good can change the world for the better that I have dedicated my life to doing what I can to make sure systems using these capacities serves life to its fullest. After spending a lifetime of studying, thinking and now my-shoulder-to-the-wheel putting what I have learned and know to work in the creation a just system I call the World Knowledge Bank®, I welcome each conversation as it arises. I dont mean to imply that I have all the answers but rather to declare openly and unabashedly that our purpose, myself and the WKBank, is to create and help others create a more just, humane and joyful world that values each and every life, human and otherwise. A system that is dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless that loves life and others lives as I love my own. I am prepared learn, to sacrifice, to listen and to speak. I am not prepared to give up on life on eartheach and every life. Crazy or not I think I have found a solid, practical and joyful way to do this. I would like to give you a way to measure the work of the WKBank, in addition to any other measure you would like to use, to judge this work. The way in which individual self interest and the interests of others is bound together is at every level, a measure of the strength, the integrity and the beauty of this work. In turn I would like to invite you and others who might be interested to join a discussion at the Mission Café, Carolyn Stephenson proprietor, on the World Knowledge Bank® and in general Freedom and the Internet, Saturday July 26th at 1pm. 239 E De Vargas St, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (505) 983-3033, or 505-310-8950. Thank you again Steve, for your generosity towards me. I know I will become a better communicator as I listen to and learn from you and all at Friam and the Santa Fe Complex. Ann Racuya-Robbins Founder and CEO World Knowledge Bank® https://www.wkbank.com <https://www.wkbank.com/> From: Steve Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 9:47 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry Ann - I am trying to arrange a visit talk by Tim Weaver http://primamateria.org/index.html and think you might be a good complement/opposite speaker to him. Read his "Statement" to see the connection with what I perceive to be your position. Forgive me if I have mis-identified you, but I am assuming you are the woman who has spoken out (most recently at the Industrial Strength Networks talk last night) only to be (mostly) dismissed/ignored or at-best defended-from. If that is the case, I wanted to commend you on your patience with this "Boy's club". There are elements among us who are truly interested in a broader participation and view than might be evident than from the conversations I've been around when you have spoken up. You must know better than I, that these are hard things for people to think about. I, for one, think that the issues you raise are valid ones. I tried to interject into one phase of the conversation last night (again assuming you are who I think you are) that *we* (the technophilic community in general and the Complex & friends in particular) are inherently naive about the *effects* and *implications* of our technology. We have a lot of good stories about how complexity thinking explains/alerts-us-to the ever-present "unintended consequences" but it is rare that we actually apply it to our own work. I think this needs to be part of every discussion, yet I understand that it is going to take some practice and "training" for us to be able to address this in all that we do *without* going to either a blameful or a defensive position. We currently tend toward dismissive, as you have experienced at least twice. This may be endemic to all "clubs" and "boys clubs" being worse? I would like to help sponsor a discussion, not just about "ethics" in technology, but how can we think (or learn to think) about the implications of our work without going to one of the many extremes? How can we leave ourselves open to being questioned about our motives, our goals, our true level of awareness of our work? I have no answers except the few hard knocks I've gathered along the way myself... and I'm not expecting anyone else to have answers much larger or deeper than that, though I would welcome anyone who has honest and deep perspective in this way of being. - Steve PS... my response to your original post inline below.... 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. I have not noticed this myself, but this may be a deficiency in my noticing/experience. For this conversation I will grant that your observations may reflect the statistics accurately. I wonder if it is not that more women are interested in B and more men in A, but rather that men are *more interested* in A than in B and women more in B than in A? 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. I would add that characterizing life (the universe and everything) as a "dynamic process" is also a bit distant with ABMs being a simplification beyond that of "dynamic process". 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. Unfortunately, much biomimickry is again low-fidelity. Many ABMs are said to bio-mimicking... This is not to say that the concept of biomimickry cannot be as rich as we choose to make it (allow it?). 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. Certainly the biosphere (the one(s) we live in) is vast compared to the engineered and even biomimicing technologies we have created ourselves (in a hundred or even thousands of years). What can live also contains an ethical dimension that grounds and precepts possibilities. I'm not sure I know what you mean by ethical in this case? I think of ethics as being a consequence of choice and that the world of possibilities is much larger than what is "ethical". It is possible that I can think of "ethics" as an organizing principle for all-possibilities, but I have to admit to a bias from my culture that says some (many) possibilities simply are "not ethical" in the sense of being "unethical" and even more possibilities are somehow outside of the bounds of ethics (neutral?). 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'm not sure I see the distinction. I think of ABMs as relatively simple computational structures which are most often used to embody simple biomimetic models (or sociomimetic?). 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. I think of all computing models to be based in western mathematics (and philosophy). Do you know of others? Like imposing platonic solid forms on the world, there are important similarities that are revealeda 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. Yes, I think you have touched on the centrality of idealization... it raises things to a plane of abstraction which often increases it's utility/effectiveness though often at the cost of it's meaning/relevance... 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 work in Virtual Reality for this very reason. I believe that the many things we have moved entirely into the plane of abstraction can benefit from returning to the embodied experience... there are fundamental and probably subtle risks in this concept... and I think maybe you are one of the few in this mix able/willing to think deeply about such ideas without needing to judge or jump to a conclusion (pro or con). I would like to propose a SapphoSocratic approach. But I will leave this for another message since this one has become rather long already. I will try to follow up on this term... I can project into it all kinds of interpretations but I assume there is a body of extant knowledge under that label and that your use of the term is related to the same. - Steve
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