II. Pedia Sapiens: A Planetary Progeny Comes to Her/His Own Actual Factual Knowledge

C. Earth Learns: Interactive Person/Planet, Self-Organizing, Daily Collaboratiions

Rosvall, Martin and Carl Bergstrom. Maps of Random Walks on Complex Networks Reveal Community Structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105/1118, 2008. University of Washington system biologists distill common features of scale-free nets, now found everywhere, from their topical subject of interlinked physics, biology, and social science journal citations. A prime exemplar, one might add, of such phenomena is often the dynamic neural connections of the human brain. So an implied extension might appreciate the correspondence of their illustrated webs of cross-interactions with similar cerebral maps of thinking, remembering, and learning neuron, synapse, and axon, as a real world-wide cognitive capacity.

Roush, Wade. Second Earth. Technology Review. July/August, 2007. A grand virtual marriage of the Second Life site and Google Earth prowess portends a global imaginative noosphere that everyone anywhere can immerse in, surf through, and contribute creatively to. Like, you know, a personal planet really coming to think and learn on its own, and maybe to itself if we might so avail.

Roush, Wade. The Infinite Library. Technology Review. May, 2005. A report on the Google sponsored and funded project to digitize the world’s collection of print books, starting with multi-million volume repositories such as Stanford and Oxford University libraries and the New York Public Library. When fully implemented, this entire global heritage is to be available free to every person anywhere.

Roush, Wade. The Internet Reborn. Technology Review. October, 2003. Its next iteration under banners such as PlanetLab and Smart Planet could be seen as the effective emergence of a global brain.

Rowlands, Mark. The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. Available in October, we quote from the publisher’s website.

There is a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate mental processes exclusively "in the head." Some think that this expanded conception of the mind will be the basis of a new science of the mind. Traditional attempts to study the mind are based on the idea that mental processes—perceiving, remembering, thinking, reasoning—exist in brains; they are often described as "software" realized by the "hardware" of the brain. The new way of thinking about the mind has emerged from the confluence of various disciplines in cognitive science ranging from perceptual and developmental psychology to robotics. It emphasizes the ways in which mental processes are embodied (partly made up of extra-neural bodily structures and processes), embedded (designed to function in tandem with the environment), enacted (constituted in part by action), and extended (located in the environment). Mark Rowlands is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami.

San Miguel, Maxi, et al. Challenges in Complex Systems Science. European Physical Journal Special Topics. 214/1, 2012. Another contribution to this FuturICT issue where nine physicists from Spain, UK, Hungary, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, and the US including Vittorio Loreto and Peter Erdi collect and consider the many disparate aspects that characterize natural and societal complexity. But as a main table with fourteen listings such as “many heterogeneous interacting parts, path dependent dynamics, networked hierarchical connectivities,” records, the pieces remain disconnected abstractions. The extensive introduction herein to Part IV: Cosmic Code tries to sort some 32 features into main classes and an overall phenomenal theme. Although “integrative” is cited in the second quote, this has yet to happen by which to realize a natural genesis.

FuturICT foundations are social science, complex systems science, and ICT. The main concerns and challenges in the science of complex systems in the context of FuturICT are laid out in this paper with special emphasis on the Complex Systems route to Social Sciences. This include complex systems having: many heterogeneous interacting parts; multiple scales; complicated transition laws; unexpected or unpredicted emergence; sensitive dependence on initial conditions; path-dependent dynamics; networked hierarchical connectivities; interaction of autonomous agents; self-organisation; non-equilibrium dynamics; combinatorial explosion; adaptivity to changing environments; co-evolving subsystems; ill-defined boundaries; and multilevel dynamics. (Abstract)

Complex systems typically have a large number of components, where the interactions (however simple they may be on the individual level) lead to collective emergent behaviours that cannot, even qualitatively, be derived as a plain resultant from the individual components’ behavior. Paramount examples of complex systems are our brain and our societies. All domain-based sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, robotics, medicine and business investigate systems that are complex in one way or another. These sciences investigate their domains in depth, which contrasts with the emerging science of complex systems which intersects the domains horizontally. By looking across the disciplines the methodology of complex systems provides two new perspectives: the first is that apparently different systems may have common properties and knowledge from one discipline can usefully feed into another; the second is that the science of complex systems is trans-disciplinary and it is creating new methods to combine the dynamical theories of many interacting social and technical subsystems. Unlike domain-based sciences such as those mentioned above, complex systems science is integrative – a science of systems of systems across many domains. (248)

Sanin, Cesar, et al. Decisional DNA: A Multi-Technology Shareable Knowledge Structure for Decisional Experience. Neurocomputing. 88/1, 2012. An eight person team originally from China, Columbia, Spain, and Poland, now at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, under the direction of coauthor Edward Szcerbicki, cleverly propose that the double helix genetic structure, which nature knew best to avail, can in fact provide a valuable model for more effective knowledge systems. In so doing an intriguing, iconic parallel is set up whence resultant computational programs become similarly genomic in kind.

Knowledge representation and engineering techniques are becoming useful and popular components of hybrid integrated systems used to solve complicated practical problems in different disciplines. These techniques offer features such as: learning from experience, handling noisy and incomplete data, helping with decision making, and predicting capabilities. In this paper, we present a multi-domain knowledge representation structure called Decisional DNA that can be implemented and shared for the exploitation of embedded knowledge in multiple technologies. Decisional DNA, as a knowledge representation structure, offers great possibilities on gathering explicit knowledge of formal decision events as well as a tool for decision making processes. Its applicability is shown in this paper when applied to different decisional technologies. The main advantages of using the Decisional DNA rely on: (i) versatility and dynamicity of the knowledge structure, (ii) storage of day-to-day explicit experience in a single structure, (iii) transportability and shareability of the knowledge, and (iv) predicting capabilities based on the collected experience. (Abstract)

Scharl, Arno and Klaus Tochtermann, eds. The Geospatial Web. London: Springer, 2007. With a subtitle of How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 are Shaping the Network Society, the book tours in 25 chapters a virtual worldwide cerebral faculty in formation. Search and access paths include NASA World Wind, Google Earth, and Microsoft Live Local 3D. In our midst, largely unbeknownst, at our service, is a fertile, burgeoning source of knowledge, discovery, visualization, and community. If we might all freely and fully implement, which web practitioners are striving toward, here may lie common solutions for a fragmenting world.

Schimmelpfennig, Robin, et al. Paradox of Diversity in the Collective Brain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. December, 2021. University of Lancaster, McGill University and London School of Economics social psychologists entertain another way to appreciate how our intense homo and anthropo sapience can actually be seen to take on a measure of their own integral intelligence. Yet on this January 27, a military invasion of Russia into the Ukraine seems imminent, whose effect will spread across Europe, the USA and may be the death of us. History if forgotten, men ever “think with tanks,” rather than in “think tanks,” i.e. seek to find better ways to live together on a finite Earthmost abide.

Human societies are collective brains. People within every society have cultural brains—brains that have evolved to seek out adaptive knowledge and socially transmit solutions. The rate of communication is a function of a society's size and interconnectedness, the fidelity of information transfer and cultural trait diversity, which affects possible solutions for recombination. Here, we focus on the ‘paradox of diversity’—that cultural trait varation offers the most potential for empowering betterment, but also poses challenges at organizational and societal phases. (Abstract)

Shafik, Rishad and Alex Yakovlev. Harmonizing Energy-Autonomous Computing and Intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 378/0594, 2019. Newcastle University scientists introduce a special issue about an Internet of Things whence all manner of digital devices, networks, data flow, identifiers, watchers become hyper-connected. For example, see Boolean Satisfiability in Quantum Compilation by Mathias Soeken, et al, Energy-driven Computing by Sivert Sliper, et al, A Semi-Holographic Hyperdimensional Representation System for Cognitive Computing by A. Serb, et al, and Markov Blankets, Information Geometry and Stochastic Thermodynamics by Thomas Parr, et al (Abstract below). As readers know, this AI transition is fraught with issues – how to balance better connectivity, computational resources, smart cities with worse dangers of surveillance and control, and so on.

The dramatic spread of computing systems at the scale of trillions leads to their pervasive penetration into the real world. As such, the way they are designed and maintained requires not only inventing new methodologies but rethinking the philosophy behind the creative processes employed by engineers and theoreticians. Autonomous sourcing and managing energy in electronic circuits and harmonizing them for reliable and maintenance-free operation are central to enable this ICT revolution. This theme issue covers a wide spectrum of challenges and opportunities for the theory and practices of design, modelling and validation of new generation computing systems. (Synopsis)

Shiffrin, Richard and Katy Borner. Mapping Knowledge Domains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 101/Supplement 1, 2004. An introduction to 19 articles from a NAS colloquium on this subject: “…charting, mining, analyzing, sorting, enabling navigation of, and displaying knowledge,” as it appears in Internet postings and journal publications. These documents are seen by contributors to take the self-similar form of scale-free complex networks.

Silk, J. W. Ferry, et al. Phylogenetic Classification of the World’s Tropical Forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115/1837, 2018. We cite this entry for its notable content and as an example of today’s worldwide collaborative studies. Over 200 coauthors are listed from every continent and many scientific fields, the lead name above is at the University of Brunei. But this epic 21st century shift from homo individuals to an anthropo person/sapiensphere, quite a major evolutionary transition, remains unrecognized because in the main (male) paradigm, no such anything exists or is going on by itself.

Identifying and explaining regional differences in tropical forest dynamics, structure, diversity, and composition are critical for anticipating region-specific responses to global environmental change. Floristic classifications are of fundamental importance for these efforts. Here we provide a global tropical forest classification that is explicitly based on community evolutionary similarity, resulting in identification of five major tropical forest regions and their relationships: (i) Indo-Pacific, (ii) Subtropical, (iii) African, (iv) American, and (v) Dry forests. African and American forests are grouped, reflecting their former western Gondwanan connection, while Indo-Pacific forests range from eastern Africa and Madagascar to Australia and the Pacific. The connection between northern-hemisphere Asian and American forests is confirmed, while Dry forests are identified as a single tropical biome. (Significance)

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