>three-dimensional Fractal Boxes interface to interlinked problem fields<
by
gmk@pegasos.ccsr.uiuc.edu,
gmk@igc.apc.org,
(217)-244-5877(voice/fax1),x8371(fax2), x1994 (msg)
http://www.santafe.edu/~gmk - //ftp://ftp.santafe.edu/pub/gmk - http://www.ccsr.uiuc.edu/~gmk/
The idea of a global cafe has fascinated many techno-communication fans as well as supporters of global understanding as a way to peace. Again there was a quick fascination of the idea but it rapidly decayed to a toy for some slow-scan video-satellite link fans. Maybe the basic problem was similar to ham radio: Now, you can make the communication link and what do you talk about now? It is similar to the experience of meeting a foreigner in a real cafe, the conversation about the different cultural background might be interesting as a novelty but there is a lack of continuity and common space.
Both examples have in common that there is no convenient way of storing the experience outside of the personal memory. Photos and even video's are usually not helpful in creating a common experience and background. The context is never naturally given: when you remember that you could need the contribution from your earlier global communication partner, (s)he or her/his contribution is not available, when you finally get the information, it is too late for an efficient exchange.
The Internet changed the situation qualitatively: Now we have a space that we can refer to, we have objects in that space that we can point at electronically, we can leave a trace that can be recognized by our communication partners, current and future. Back in 1991 this cyber-space was virtually empty compared with what we have available today. Most of the accessible information resources were related to the state of our global environment: satellite images of weather patterns came online on the Internet every one or two hours. The earth became observable in quasi-real-time.
At the ARS electronica of 1991 we presented the vision of this directly observable world with immediate access through the Internet in an Installation that we called EarthStation. In that installations we explored a series of approaches to visualize this new information space that was continuously evolving according to complex, non-linear equations with multi-dimensional, potentially chaotic solutions. We designed a PhaseSpaceShip (fig. 1) that would allow us to experience the sensitivity of equations, modeling atmospheric convection processes as if we were flying through those attractors and their basins in a space ship whose controls were the parameters and forces of the equations. Because of the multidimensional nature of those spaces we used sound cues as additional orientation help. Today we can couple those equations and create multi-user simulation environments distributed across the Internet with additional, automated agents that can help to explore the structure of the attractors.
Each of these PhaseSpaceShip interfaces describes equations corresponding to one problem area where quantitative models can be formulated. The question arises how we can structure the problem areas in a re-cognizable manner such that we can orient ourselves among all those problem areas and re-trieve solutions or at least our approximate location. The concept that we used for that purpose is that of three dimensional FractalBoxes: we move into the problem space of our world and find boxes floating in that space with labels indicating some of the most urgent problems of our world. We point in the direction of the problem area we are interested in and enter that problem space. We will hear information about the topic we just entered, graphical information, videos are displayed on the walls, but also subway maps to help us find our way in this complex world of many interlinked global problems.
Figure 2: Fractal Boxes interface to interlinked problem fields
From such an EarthStation we can observe and interact with the state of the world on many different platforms. What happens, if we interconnect billions of those EarthStations? Complexity theory tells us that we have to expect new global structures to emerge and evolve according to new dynamical laws. Peter Russel speculated about the creation of a Global Brain when ten billion humans are tightly linked through computer systems and the Internet. Why is the connections through computers so essential, why won't it work with ham-radio, slow-scan TV, CNN, fax, telephone, etc?
We think the answer lies in the limited information processing and especially storage capacities of each node. If we can use powerful search and information management systems at each node, we can store our contributions to the global information system locally, we don't have to send it to the publisher for other than archival reasons and we can go to libraries for other than information retrieval reasons. For this concept to work we need a fast and efficient way to link the nodes together on a global scale that will allow us to create hyper-documents that allow us to build new objects that are directly linked to all the relevant information that is connected to the problem of interest.
Back in 1991 we created network hyper-documents (Fig. 3) with links to information servers and to the first www sites on the Internet.
We have made a prediction about the conditions, under which this transition would take place: The hyper media documents (together with their users) will form generalized neural cell-assemblies on the Internet. The assemblies have to be synchronously active, i.e. the access of the individual nodes has to be perceived to occur simultaneously.
We estimate that averaged round-trip times between the members of these cell assemblies of under 200 ms will provide us with the appearance of globally synchronized activity the interaction of these activities will create the basis of new modes of global consciousness.
We have made a prediction about the conditions, under which this transition would take place: The hyper media documents (together with their users) will form generalized neural cell-assemblies on the Internet. The assemblies have to be synchronously active, i.e. the access of the individual nodes has to be perceived to occur simultaneously.
We estimate that averaged round-trip times between the members of these cell assemblies of under 200 ms will provide us with the appearance of globally synchronized activity the interaction of these activities will create the basis of new modes of global consciousness.
A second prerequisite for associative memory on the global network is a highly-interconnected structure of knowledge links. This feature is currently ported over to the Internet via the WorldWideWeb (WWW). For example, an expert is to a certain degree characterized by his/her professional connections. Many of these connections are quite informal, like discussions in the hallway or during a conference. We believe that the Internet help to provide greater equity for Third World countries where researchers might participate in discussions on USENET or present their papers at conferences remotely. Or in other words, if we want to become an expert in a field, we can start by reading the most recent technical article.
We will find statements that assume prior knowledge of other publications in the references. If we read the book/paper in the references, the same situation might occur for several levels of recursion. It can be expected, however, that we would not have to penetrate more than five levels of references before we can become a reasonable expert in any field, at least locally as it is related to a specific problem. In the context of the WWW, research institutions as well as individual researchers start now to create hyper-media documents that describe the work (publications, data, simulation results), but almost more importantly they typically contain access to the private links to other nodes that this person or institution finds important.
We find it essential to point out that in our opinion both the human element as well as the computer-workstation will build integrated nodes of this GlobalBrain, each cyber-species by itself will not be able to achieve this transition only in a very tight symbiosis with this new level of global consciousness be possible.