Hello all! I bet you thought that I had given up on this enterprise - to tell you the truth, I got depressed about the whole matter :-( That can happen, I guess, to the best of 'um, but in the future I want to write more regularly to this blog. I got a scare put into me that the material in the blog and website were "grandiose". This fear shut me down for a few weeks. This experience brings to mind a mantra from the science fiction novel, Dune, by Frank Herbert, one of my favorite books from childhood called the The Bene Gesserit Litany of Fear: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see it's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
I experienced a breakthrough in my research this weekend. The Information Society Technology program, sponsored by the European Union, has recently released some open source software projects developed by consortiums of European universities that I find most interesting. One of these projects is called "Agent Academy" and other is called "The DREAM project". I will elaborate in detail about these projects in the future. I believe the above projects are significant, however, because they bring the power of complexity theory “to the masses”. Anyone with a personal computer, an internet connection, some technical ability, and imagination can download the software and begin to run their own experiments to investigate to real world phenomena.
I would like to see the two IST systems coupled together to exploit both of their features. The “solution space” of possible multiagent / artificial life systems should be ‘searched out” using “grids of computers” to generate extremely large data sets to be analyzed with data mining and visualization techniques. This, I believe, is necessary basic research that needs to be done in order to go forward with the Wisdom Seeker IDE. This approach is being used by the University of California at Berkeley’s SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) project ), which employs’ “screen savers” running on the PC’s of users across the world to do processing of radio telescope signals. The power of this approach is described on the SETI website as follows: The SETI@home project is an awesome display of the power of distributed grid computing. Starting with a base of 1500 volunteers in 1998, SETI@home has grown to more than 4.7 million participants in 226 countries, with 2000 new volunteers signing up daily. The SETI@home volunteers have formed the planet’s largest supercomputer, averaging 60 teraflops [60 trillion floating point operations per second] and donating about 1200 years of CPU time daily.
What sort of data would the integrated system analyze? As hard as it is to believe, agents and multiagent systems have many of the characteristics of humans and human societies, such as beliefs, goals, plans, emotions (affective computing), traits, trust, delegation, cooperation, communication, and ethics. A strange, but familiar new world! Some phenomena may be analogous to our world, and some may be novel (or even alien – and worth studying in its own right). My point is this – if countries can spend billions of dollars searching for intelligence in outer space, then it has the funds to search for intelligence right here at home…
The main thing is that life is moving for me again - which brings to mind an Eastern saying:
If you want to know your past life,
look into your present condition;
if you want to know your future,
look into your present action.
It is not the wind that is moving;
it is not the flag that is moving;
it is mind that is moving.
There are no holy places and no holy people,
only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.
Some future directions
This is a short post to outline some of the directions that I will be taking this blog and the associated website in the near future. Of course, my next task will be to complete the article "The Allure of Fractals, Part I". So far, I have gotten some general ideas for what I want to write, plus found a whole host of websites to link to. From the experience of writing the first article, I will be using an iterative process to develop the article, alternating between writing and finding supporting links. I want to then write two more articles, one about Platonic philosphy as it relates to the open source software project, complexity theory, and politics (I will be moving some material from the website over to the blog), and then one about competency rallying for open source software projects based upon new forms of project management, including the swarm methodology. Finally, I will investigate looking into other relevent blogs to link to, plus RSS feeds to hopefully increase the communicative aspects of the blog. The end goal of all this is to evangelize about the open source software project, The Wisdom Seeker IDE. Personally, I had a nice weekend this weekend, with two "get togethers" with family. I am trying to write on a consistent schedule, so that is why I am giving a "heads up" about the progress I have been making (even if just in thought) in this posting. I have noticed that the Wisdom Seeker IDE web page has gotten over 140 hits since mid January. I am feeling positive about this, but wish that some people would write me and start getting involved. I think that maybe moving the nontechnical "stuff" to the blog and leaving a strictly technical web page might increase the quality of the presentation.
THE ALLURE OF FRACTALS: PART I
The topic of this post will be continuation of the last, since the topic is art, particularly a contrast between two forms of art: Euclidean art and non-Euclidean art (of which belongs fractal art). Art can take many forms, but in this post, two dimensional, three dimensional, and even "four dimensional" images will be presented, as well as forms of music. The clovis point was a work of art, a three dimensional sculpture in a medium of stone, and the Wisdom Seeker IDE will be a work of art, sculpted partially in logic and partially in the nonlinear system dynamics of multi agent system simulation software executing in a medium of silicon, gallium arsenide, or some other exotic material (compromising the base for integrated computer circuitry). How can I make such a bold statement? The answer is that I have faith in complexity theory, an area of mathematics that was introduced to me somewhat surreptitiously during my early college years through constructs known as fractals. However, my acquaintance with geometric form actually goes back farther than that - so, as the jedi master Yoda implied to his apprentice Luke Skywalker in the movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" - I have had "much to unlearn". For the duration of this post, please take an opportunity to let your mind wander as you "unlearn" many of the things you have been taught in school (unless you are already in the field of complexity theory) and become my "apprentices", as we contemplate the "forceful" effect that Euclidean geometry has had especially on the western mind and the rebel challenge that fractals represent. Did you know that there is actually a religion based on the Star Wars movies called Jediism? From the above, you may get the impression that I practice it... or that Yoda has a sense of humor :-).
I took geometry as a freshman in high school. I found it to be so much different than algebra, because the emphasis was not on equations, but shapes. Rene Descartes, a figure that frequently comes up in both mathematical and philosophical discussion, was responsible for linking the two fields back in the 1600's (see Descartes links one, two, and three) It was strange not to work as much with numbers as with proofs. I can remember sitting in study hall laboring away on geometric proofs while a senior star of the football team (the panthers) kept kicking the back of my chair from his seat. This continued for about two weeks until I said for the room to hear, "G****** it, cut it out!". This is how the topics of geometry and high school athletics became unalterably intertwined in my mind :-) For an introduction to the wide world of high school geometry, check out the mathforum.org web site. I am being facetious, of course, but what I will not be facetious about is that the Euclidean geometric concepts introduced in high school are NOT REPRESENTATIVE of REAL WORLD PHENOMENA - they are just mathematical abstractions. This, however, is not what the western world thought for thousands of years. Not much is known about the life of Euclid, but among is writings is a famous book called The Elements, which present five basic postulates that are the framework of Euclidean geometry. Since good things sometimes come in groupings greater than three, chapter 13 of the elements, Euclid gives constructions for the five "Platonic Solids". Not only are the Platonic solids just mathematical constructions, but they are the basis for some of Plato's philosophy. Euclid was a Platonist. If you care to look at the Wisdom Seeker IDE open source software development web site, it will be very evident that Plato is my "main man" in providing direction for this venture. For an illustration of how the Platonic Solids apply to art, plus the impact of other geometric notions, check out this web site. Ironically, for all their simplistic beauty AND the fact that Plato is involved, I am going to debunk their utility to model nature in the paragraphs to follow.
Have you ever heard the saying "running around like a chicken with its head chopped off?". Most certainly the picture to left brings this verbal imagery to mind. The picture, however, is actually art based upon "non-Euclidean geometry". In the early 1800's alternatives to Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometries, were discovered. Non-Euclidean geometries have since been proven to have many real world applications, perhaps most importantly in Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Yet, Euclidean geometry still takes precedence in our secondary education systems, a trend that is challenged by the following article (which includes a link to some non-Euclidean art). I encourage you to play around with the software in the article, because you will learn, as any directionally challenged person knows, that the shortest distance between two points... is not always a straight line :-) An example of an early twentieth century art form that was influenced by non-Euclidean geometry was cubism, and perhaps its most famous painter was Pablo Picasso. I found a web site for a most interesting college course in aesthetics whose goal for the first week is to compare Plato and Picasso. This web site says: "Philosophy has always been interested in the question concerning art. Plato is famous for his position on the relation between art and social harmony. As you will discern in the reading, Plato does not hold a high opinion of artists. While his criticisms of the poets are mainly directed at various cultural interpretations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, there is a strong indication that Plato did not believe that the arts (as a mode of free expression) are as valuable as the analytic disciplines of mathematics and philosophy. In the Republic we are told that the arts will be subordinate and controlled (insofar as they are employed to educate) by the higher discipline of philosophy." As evidenced by the clovis point story, I have a high opinions of artists, and I highly disagree. I do agree that if I had to choose between a picture of a pyramid and the chicken painting, I would choose the pyramid as having a higher degree of aesthetics. But then again, I might change my mind about that closer to Thanksgiving... :-)
To use a double negative, until my early college years, I had "not disliked" art. I had always liked music since starting band in middle grade school, but I had not been into pictures. At best, my notion of aesthetics had been a starving artist's landscape painting advertised during a public television fund raising drive. But I had always been a math nut, and had I known more about the relationship between mathematics and art, I may have had a different persausion. However, out of the blue, pictures (links one and two) of objects called fractals (links one and two) began to permeate the popular culture (links one and two). Fractals are manifestations of non-euclidean geometry, but they actually have fractional dimension (as opposed to being 2D, 3D, 4D, etc.). Software actually exists to determine the fractional dimension of a given image. Roughly speaking, an object has a fractional dimension based upon its degree of "jaggedness". By manipulating the applets in this web page, you can see how jaggedness "builds up" in fractals as more detail is added. Java applet technology has made possible such K-12 classroom applications as the "Fractal Microscope". Such educational experiences are important since shapes in the real world are fractal. So is the structure of music, either man made like Bach's Art of the Fugue or synthesized from fractal images (links one and two). Watch out, starving artists! :-)
To be continued...
This is my first post to the Wisdom Seeker blog. Since this is a beginning, I think I am going to start at the beginning. In the late 1970's there was a "universal spectacular" on the NBC network titled "Centennial". It was based upon the book Centennial by the Pulitzer prize winning author James Michener. Centennial was written to commemorate the U.S. bicentennial, and it is the chronicle of the growth of a fictitious town on the prairie in Colorado named Centennial, which was supposedly founded in 1876. Many of James Michener's books are fiction loosely based on historical events that took place at a particular location, such as Texas, Alaska, Poland, South Africa, etc. Anyway, I can remember watching this mini-series on TV with my family, even though I was a few years old. In 1979, my dad had some surgery done, and he was off of work for a few weeks. During that time, he read the book, and he read parts of the book to me. There an early chapter of Centennial titled "The Inhabitants", and it has animal stories about dinosaurs, rattlesnakes, horses, buffalo, beaver, and other animals that inhabited the region. This illustrates the depth to which Michener treated the history of the area. My dad read me stories from this chapter. When I became able to read well enough, I read Centennial as my first novel.
After graduation from high school, I enrolled in an engineering program at a college near my home town. I have read Centennial many times over, and I enjoyed every word of the book, but in adulthood a certain few pages jumped out at me. Those few pages were the "Clovis Point Story". It takes place in the chapter after "The Inhabitants", "The Many Coups of Lame Beaver", which is obviously about the culture of the plains indians. I think that the Clovis Point Story succinctly sumarizes the evolution of man since ancient times, and gives me pause about our potential as a species. I agree with Michener's analysis that the intellectual effort for ancient man to develop the process of clovis point creation is of an order of magnitude that maybe can only be rivaled in recent modern times. The principles of that ancient process, such as artisanship, concentration, daring, proportion, and calculation are still entirely relevent today, and perhaps more so in an age of mass production and mass commercialization. The key element is that such work takes time - time for beauty, time for apprenticeship, time for worship. Time flowed differently in ancient times, and not to the rhythms of machines. As an engineering student I had a great love of machines, but also the insight from other readings to know that that love must be tempered with reason. Humans must come first.
The story of the Clovis Point inspires me to create a work of beauty AND utility. The work I have begun is called the Wisdom Seeker IDE, and it is an open source software project hosted by sourceforge.net (see link under blog title). The creation of this project is also an invitation of others to join in a great venture, an effort to recapture the spirit of the clovis point. In many, but not all, parts of the United States and the industrialized world people do not live on a subsistence basis, unlike the people of ancient times. Over one billion people, however, throughout the world are still on the brink of starvation. Starvation is to the underdeveloped world is a different beast to kill, one often resulting from governmental indifference or oppression. And in all parts of the world we have nuclear proliferation and environmental degradation. Just as a spear with a clovis point attached to it was a mighty weapon to kill great beasts such as the mammoth, an actual wisdom seeking software application would be a sharp instrument to attack and slay "abstract mammoths" and other nefarious beasts of the human reality. What the Wisdom Seeker IDE project needs right now is the aid of human will and imagination and a lot of it. Without artisanship, concentration, daring, proportion, and calculation it may end up just another machine, and possibly one that does not serve human purposes. Please read the story of the clovis point and visit the Wisdom Seeker IDE project web site AND write me emails about what you think. I will be incorporating some of those emails into this blog in the future, as well as responses to them.
