Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Goblins! Fractal Soundtracks
"This is called "Kinesis". It's an audio-visual representation of a Fractal Social Organization (FSO). FSO is a novel class of socio-technical complex systems characterized by a distributed, bio-inspired, hierarchical architecture. Based on a same building block that is recursively applied at different layers, FSO-based systems provide a homogeneous way to model collective behaviors of different complexity and scale." See note from Vincenzo De Florio | LinkedIn
Labels: #fractals, #simulations, #SocialModels
Monday, February 09, 2015
IBM Fractalize
"Just one of the main building blocks of the universe. Known as ‘God’s thumbprint,’ these simple math formulas reveal the intricate recursive patterns found within nature, yet still remain one of science’s best-kept secrets. Follow along as we explore the contours, curiosities and creator of this beautiful wonder of the computer age. 'A fractal is a way of seeing infinity.' —Benoit B. Mandelbrot." Play with Fractals at IBM Innovation Culture + Tumblr = IBMblr
Labels: #fractals
Friday, February 06, 2015
Safecracking the Brain
“Turing’s work represents a form of probabilistic reasoning that the brain appears to have adopted to solve particular problems that are common to both perception and code-breaking,” Full article @ Nautilus
Meet Walter Pitts, the Homeless Genius Who Revolutionized Artificial Intelligence
"Though they started at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, McCulloch and Pitts were destined to live, work, and die together. Along the way, they would create the first mechanistic theory of the mind, the first computational approach to neuroscience, the logical design of modern computers, and the pillars of artificial intelligence." Full article @ Nautilus
Labels: #AI, #Cybernetics
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Eclipse Prediction on the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculating Machine Known as the Antikythera Mechanism
Really proud to have edited this one:
"The ancient Greeks built a machine that can predict, for many years ahead, not only eclipses but also a remarkable array of their characteristics, such as directions of obscuration, magnitude, colour, angular diameter of the Moon, relationship with the Moon’s node and eclipse time. It was not entirely accurate, but it was an astonishing achievement for its era." Full paper @ PLOS ONE
"The ancient Greeks built a machine that can predict, for many years ahead, not only eclipses but also a remarkable array of their characteristics, such as directions of obscuration, magnitude, colour, angular diameter of the Moon, relationship with the Moon’s node and eclipse time. It was not entirely accurate, but it was an astonishing achievement for its era." Full paper @ PLOS ONE
Labels: #AncientTechnology, #AntikytheraMechanism, #Computation, #Rome, #Technology
Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Lost chunk of pioneering Edsac computer found
An original part of one of the UK's pioneering computers has been found in the US. The part is a significant chunk of Edsac - a machine built at Cambridge in the late 1940s to serve scientists at the university. Full news article @ BBC News
