Perspectives On Culture And Agent Based Simulations

This volume analyses, from a computational point of view, how culture may arise, develop and evolve through time. The four sections in this book examine and analyse the modelling of culture, group and organisation culture, culture simulation, and culture-sensitive technology design. Different research disciplines have different perspectives on culture, making it difficult to compare and integrate different concepts and models of culture. By taking a computational perspective this book nevertheless enables the integration of concepts that play a role in culture, even though they might originate from different disciplines. Culture is usually regarded as something vague and qualitative and thus difficult to deal with in a computational and formal setting. Taking a computational approach to culture thus encompasses a twofold risk: taking a too simplistic approach to cultural influence on behaviour; or trying to capture too much, hence not leading to useful computational tools. However, the approaches and insights in this collection show how different perspectives by leading researchers described in thirteen chapters still can form a coherent picture. The book thus illustrates the potential of using computing systems to better understand culture. By describing methods, theories and concrete application results about the integration of cultural aspects into computer systems, this book provides inspiration to researchers of all disciplines alike and presents the start of an interdisciplinary dialogue on culture.

Using the investigation of criminal culture as an example application, this edited volume presents a novel approach to agent-based simulation: interpretive agent-based social simulation as a methodological and transdisciplinary approach to examining the potential of qualitative data and methods for agent-based modelling (ABM). Featuring updated articles as well as original chapters which provide a cohesive and novel approach to the digital humanities, the book challenges the common conviction that hermeneutics and simulation are two mutually exclusive ways to understand and explain human behaviour and social change. Exploring how methodology benefits from taking cultural complexities into account and bringing these methods together in an innovative combination of qualitative-hermeneutic and digital techniques, the book unites experts in the field to connect ABM to narrative theories, thereby providing a novel tool for cultural studies. An innovative methodological contribution to narrative theory, this volume will be of primary benefit to researchers, scholars, and academics in the fields of ABM, hermeneutics, and criminology. The book will also appeal to those working in policing, security, and forensic consultation.

This book illustrates the potential for computer simulation in the study of modern slavery and worker abuse, and by extension in all social issues. It lays out a philosophy of how agent-based modelling can be used in the social sciences. In addressing modern slavery, Chesney considers precarious work that is vulnerable to abuse, like sweat-shop labour and prostitution, and shows how agent modelling can be used to study, understand and fight abuse in these areas. He explores the philosophy, application and practice of agent modelling through the popular and free software NetLogo. This topical book is grounded in the technology needed to address the messy, chaotic, real world problems that humanity faces—in this case the serious problem of abuse at work—but equally in the social sciences which are needed to avoid the unintended consequences inherent to human responses. It includes a short but extensive NetLogo guide which readers can use to quickly learn this software and go on to develop complex models. This is an important book for students and researchers of computational social science and others interested in agent-based modelling.

Fifteen papers were presented at the first workshop on Multi-Agent Systems and Agent-Based Simulation held as part of the Agents World conference in Paris, July 4-- 6, 1998. The workshop was designed to bring together two developing communities: the multi-agent systems researchers who were the core participants at Agents World, and social scientists interested in using MAS as a research tool. Most of the social sciences were represented, with contributions touching on sociology, management science, economics, psychology, environmental science, ecology, and linguistics. The workshop was organised in association with SimSoc, an informal group of social scientists who have arranged an irregular series of influential workshops on using simulation in the social sciences beginning in 1992. While the papers were quite heterogeneous in substantive domain and in their disciplinary origins, there were several themes which recurred during the workshop. One of these was considered in more depth in a round table discussion led by Jim Doran at the end of the workshop on 'Representing cognition for social simulation', which addressed the issue of whether and how cognition should be modelled. Quite divergent views were expressed, with some participants denying that individual cognition needed to be modelled at all, and others arguing that cognition must be at the centre of social simulation.

Intelligent Computational Systems presents current and future developments in intelligent computational systems in a multi-disciplinary context. Readers will learn about the pervasive and ubiquitous roles of artificial intelligence (AI) and gain a perspective about the need for intelligent systems to behave rationally when interacting with humans in complex and realistic domains. This reference covers widespread applications of AI discussed in 11 chapters which cover topics such as AI and behavioral simulations, AI schools, automated negotiation, language analysis and learning, financial prediction, sensor management, Multi-agent systems, and much more. This reference work is will assist researchers, advanced-level students and practitioners in information technology and computer science fields interested in the broad applications of AI.

This book aims to explore the supercomplexity of interaction and to suggest ways of teaching about this supercomplexity in various settings, including intercultural communication and language-learning. Using complex systems theory, the author argues that interaction is actually a supercomplex adaptive system which interconnects a number of different complex systems (the 4Es: Expression, Encounter, Education, Emotion) to give it meaning. She then draws on the concept of heartfulness to promote different ways of understanding and teaching the supercomplexity of interaction. This book will be of interest to language educators and students, as well as scholars of intercultural communication.

The aim of this book is to demonstrate how Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) can be used to enhance the study of social agency, organizational behavior and organizational management. It derives from a workshop, sponsored by the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behavior (AISB), held at Bournemouth University Business School in 2014 on “Modelling Organizational Behavior and Social Agency”. The contents of this book are divided into four themes: Perspectives, Modeling Organizational Behavior, Philosophical and Methodological Perspective, and Modeling Organized Crime and Macro-Organizational Phenomena. ABM is a particular and advanced type of computer simulation where the focus of modeling shifts to the agent rather than to the system. This allows for complex and more realistic representations of reality, facilitating an innovative socio-cognitive perspective on organizational studies. The editors and contributing authors claim that the use of ABM may dramatically expand our understanding of human behavior in organizations. This is made possible because of (a) the computational power made available by technological advancements, (b) the relative ease of the programming, (c) the ability to borrow simulation practices from other disciplines, and (d) the ability to demonstrate how the ABM approach clearly enables a socio-cognitive perspective on organizational complexity. Showcasing contributions from academics and researchers of various backgrounds and discipline, this volumes provides a global, interdisciplinary perspective.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation, MABS 2013, held in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, in May 2013. The workshop was help in conjunction with Twelfth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2013. The 11 revised full papers included in this volume were carefully selected from 29 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on MABS for real-time and online data, formal approaches in MABS: design and validation, MABS in environmental modeling, simulating social phenomena.