Sciber

Brian Eno, Peter Schmidt, and Cybernetics

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:46:00 +0000

"Cybernetics is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts. The word itself seems sinister and futuristic, but the term has ancient roots – the Greek word kybernetes, meaning steersman. Cybernetics was famously defined in more recent times by Norbert Wiener in 1948, as the science of “control and communication, in the animal and the machine.” Words like "control” may seem to have creepy overtones, but at its heart, cybernetics is simply the study of systems. "Cybernetics is the discipline of whole systems thinking...a whole system is a living system is a learning system," as Stewart Brand put it in 1980. Cybernetic systems have been used to model all kinds of phenomena, with varying degrees of success – factories, societies, machines, ecosystems, brains -- and many noted artists and musicians derived inspiration from this powerful conceptual toolkit. Cybernetics may be one of the most interdisciplinary frameworks ever devised; its theories link engineering, math, physics, biology, psychology, and an array of other fields, and ideas from cybernetics inevitably infiltrated the arts. The musician and producer Brian Eno, for example, was a big fan of connecting ideas from cybernetics to the studio environment, and to music composition, in his work in the 1970s."

Full article @ Rhizone.

P.S. Thanks Artemy for sending this!

R, the Software, Finds Fans in Data Analysts

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:35:00 +0000

"R is also the name of a popular programming language used by a growing number of data analysts inside corporations and academia. It is becoming their lingua franca partly because data mining has entered a golden age, whether being used to set ad prices, find new drugs more quickly or fine-tune financial models." Full Story @ NYTimes.com

Slides for Lecture 9 online

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 04:16:00 +0000

Lecture 9

The Year Online

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:58:00 +0000

The Year Online:The business of social networking, cloud computing, and a flaw in the fabric of the Internet top the most notable stories of 2008. Full story @ Technology Review: The Year Online

The Year Online

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:58:00 +0000

The Year Online:The business of social networking, cloud computing, and a flaw in the fabric of the Internet top the most notable stories of 2008. Full story @ Technology Review: The Year Online

Slides for Lecture 8 online

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Lecture 8 - The Cyborg Species

Imagine Cup Student Competition 2009

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:22:00 +0000

The World’s Premier Student Technology Competition: Imagine Cup Student Competition 2009. Looks especially at the Information Technology Competition.

"I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world."
--Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft Corp.

Everything that the world may become "someday" lies in the hands of young people today. As they look at the road ahead, their close relationship with technology enables them to dream in ways we never have before. Put the two together, and you have young minds holding the tools that can make their vision a reality.

This is the recipe that inspired Microsoft to create the Imagine Cup. What begins with a burst of inspiration and a lot of hard work can become a future software breakthrough, a future career, or a flourishing new industry. The Imagine Cup encourages young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world – today. Now in its sixth year, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a truly global competition focused on finding solutions to real world issues.

Open to students around the world, the Imagine Cup is a serious challenge that draws serious talent, and the competition is intense. The contest spans a year, beginning with local, regional and online contests whose winners go on to attend the global finals held in a different location every year. The intensity of the work brings students together, and motivates the competitors to give it their all. The bonds formed here often last well beyond the competition itself.

CDI grant awards 2008

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:36:00 +0000

List of CDI Awards

The body is obsolete

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:35:00 +0000

Is this the future of Human-Computer Interaction?

Links for Lecture 8

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:16:00 +0000

Animals using tools:

Crow and Wire
Capuchin Monkeys (Windows Media).
More about Tool Use in Animals.

Opaque Technology

List of bad designs.
Design Guru Donald Norman and his publications.

Towards portable knowledge technology

Google SMS, here is the Manual. And what about Google in your Brain? It is coming soon.

Cyborgs in Movies

Blade Runner

Ubiquitous computing

Smart Shopping
Mark Weiser
Tokyo RFID Map. More details at InfoWorld.
social dynamics and coordinated human activity

interactive fabrics

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:03:00 +0000

"A company called Luminex has hit on the idea of weaving fibre-optics into fabric, so the wearer can really light up a room when they enter it." Full article at BBC News.

Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:02:00 +0000

"Kiss your keyboard goodbye: Soon we'll jack our brains directly into the Net - and that's just the beginning". Full Story at CNNMoney.com: Future Boy: This is your brain on Google

Video from CyberKinetics

Networking from the craddle

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:02:00 +0000

A host of new sites, including Totspot, Odadeo, Lil’Grams and Kidmondo, offer parents a chance to invite friends and family to join and contribute to a network geared to connecting them to the baby in their lives. Full story @ NYTimes.com

Give a laptop. Change the World

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:46:00 +0000

Lecture slides for Lecture 7 online

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:25:00 +0000

Lecture 7 - Modeling the World

Wikipedia Visualizations

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:54:00 +0000

Wikipedia Visualizations and Emergent Mosaic of Wikipedian Activity

Language: a social history of words

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:13:00 +0000

Language evolved as part of a uniquely human group of traits, the interdependence of which calls for an integrated approach to the study of brain function, argue Eörs Szathmáry and Szabolcs Számadó. Full article @ Nature

Links for lecture 7

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:01:00 +0000

Turing Machine Simulator 1
Turing Machine Simulator 2
Pi the Movie

The Antikythera Mechanism
Interactive Relighting of the Antikythera Mechanism
Story @ BBC News
The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Fibonacci Sequence

A good description of L-Systems by Chris Jennings

XXI century science

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:18:00 +0000

"If handled appropriately, data about Internet-based communication and interactivity could revolutionize our understanding of collective human behaviour". Full essay @A twenty-first century science : Article : Nature

New readings online

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:15:00 +0000

Bettencourt, L.M.A., J.Lobo, D. Helbing, C. Kühnert, and G.B. West [2007] "Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities.", PNAS 104(17), 7301-7306

T. Helikar, J. Konvalina, J. Heidel, and J.A. Rogers [2008] "Emergent decision-making in biological signal transduction networks.", PNAS. 105(6): 1913-1918

J. Lewis [2008] "From Signals to Patterns: Space, Time, and Mathematics in Developmental Biology.", Science. 322(5900): 399-403

lecture slides for lecture 6 online

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:07:00 +0000

Lecture 6 - Complexity

Hans Bremermann

Bacteria That Do Logic

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:24:00 +0000

A team engineers microbes to perform AND, OR, NAND and NOR logic operations. Full story @Science News

Hanoi problem

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Hanoi Towers with 3 Disks

Hanoi Tower Applet

Ted Talk: kevin Kelly

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:35:00 +0000

Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did

What is Computation? How Does Nature Compute?

noreply@blogger.com (CyberL) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:59:00 +0000

Adrian German over in Computer Science has organized what looks to be a fascinating conference, Midwest NKS 2008, that will be taking place this weekend, starting on Friday. There is an amazing array of speakers, either live or by videoconference, including Gregory Chaitin, David Deutsch, Ed Fredkin, Sir Anthony J. Legget, Charles Bennett, Stephen Wolfram, and more.

The theme of the conference is "What is Computation? How Does Nature Compute?". There will be talks on the physics of information, quantum computation, cellular automata (of course; NKS == Wolfram's New Kind of Science), and, generally, the nature of reality and computability.

Though there are some lunches and dinners that require paid registration, everything else is FREE, including all of the lectures and the coffee, donuts, and other refreshments. Events start at 8:30am Friday 10/31 and run until Sunday 11/2 at 12:15pm.

Full schedule and additional info