Re: mailing lists again

[Uri Wilensky <uriw@media.mit.edu>]

>Starlogoers,
>
>Do any of you have any firsthand experience with the recent
>International Conference
>on Complex Systems in Boston, 9/21-9/26?  Mitchel, do you?  Anything
>interesting to report with respect to our work on this list?  I'd love
>to get hold of the proceedings.
>
Hi Larry,
	The Tufts Modeling project (Making sense of Complexity) shared a
booth with Mitchel and the MIT group. We demoed Sunday thru Wednesday and
MIT demoed on Thursday.

Overall, the reaction to StarLogo was quite positive. The main interest,
however, was on use of StarLogo and object-based parallel modeling
languages for compexity *research*.

Besides that, the conference was quite lively with lots of speakers on
diverse topics. A major theme was trying to get consensus on definitions
for complexity and emergence. Mnay different ideas were offered about what
it is to look at a system in terms of higher-level ("emergent") properties.
Though many of the talks were devoted to nailing down a definition of
complexity or how to
think about complex systems (which presumably defy simple reductionist
explanations), it seems consensus on these matters is still far off. There
is disagreement as to whether (or to what extent) observations about
complex systems can be scaled to different domains - i.e. could
descriptions of physics and of economics ever be subsumed under the same
general principles? - or if the idea of 'emergence' means the same thing in
different disciplines at all.

I'm not sure if the proceedings are to be published. I'd be glad to send
you a copy of the final (and much revised) program if you'd like.

				Best,


                                     -Uri


                                # ### #  #   #
                                #   # #   #  #
                                    # #  #  #
                                    # #  #   #