randform

A sort of brief follow-up to the last two posts about simulations. Here a link to Tim’s simulation of a critter under the couch.

Musician Imogen Heap in her tech wear

In a recent comment on randform randform reader Bibi asked:

You had written at Azimuth that your idea to use MMOGs for simulating economic and political real world scenarios

seems to have recently been picked up for the Global Participatory Platform of the 2013 Flagship proposal FucturICT

It seems also that your scientific platform idea had been picked up for that ICTfutur grant proposal.

What about your intellectual property?

The FuturICT application for 1 billion Euros had though been turned down, will you now write an EU grant proposal?

Answers to this comment after the click.

(more…)

Tim’s song “time” has now a video on youtube.
Bye the way the former cinema (“Kino Sojus“) you see there is – as what I read in the newspapers – currently intendead by the authorities to be turned into a shopping mall.
It was closed about 4 years ago.

The past 6 months I was involved in a student software project at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (University of the applied sciences). The project is called MIMIRIX. It is going to be presented today at the school in building G Room 007 around 1.30 pm. As you may know there is currently the filmfestival Berlinale in Berlin, hence there are many wellknown actors in Berlin. So actually the latest gossip here was that Angelina Jolie comes together with Shah Rukh Khan to the MIMIRIX presentation. But these are of course blatant lies. More about MIMIRIX later.

supplement 11.2.12:
Short comment to the above logo:
The term MIMIRIX was coined by Martin Bilsing,
the logo was designed by Igne Degutyte
using the font Petita by Manfred Klein.

“HirniKoppic”, Copic Markers on paper, by artist “nettwürg” on the occasion of the rumors about the possibility of closing the Medizinhistorisches Museum (Berlin Medical Historical Museum) of the Charité.

Using Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM) researchers of EPFL gathered quite some interesting images from inside the brain:

->Holograms Reveal Brain’s Inner Workings.

When do we get to see brain images from image imaginations? and when can others recognize these?

Short notice: I am giving a talk on contents of the game scheme article and the scientific platform article on July 1st at the open knoledge conference in Berlin.

Photography: Pal Lindlund

This post is like the previous post a comment to the discussion about human-machine hybrids in the recently uploaded game-scheme article.
In a passage from human to a human-machine hybrid the tolerance towards body modifications plays an important role.
There was recently an interesting interview in the english newspaper “The Guardian” wether cosmetic surgery does help or damage people.
The interview however didn’t really touch the issue of how strongly plastic surgery (and other body modifications) is influenced by cultural predispositions (which are of course often influenced by economic considerations, but not only by these). In particular it also didn’t touch upon the question in how far the design of the human outer appearance via cosmetic surgery (especially its current boom) etc. might be seen as a step in a human-machine-hybrid transition.

An upload of an updated version of the article draft “New economic schemes in games” is at the corresponding randform blogpost.

In the blogpost on the return of investments I proposed to use games for testing new economical scenarious. I currently try to make an article out of that.
In the draft I sofar have given an overview about games and roughly motivated why I think that it may be a good idea to introduce new economical schemes. In particular I talk about the limitations of this planet, design and in particular about something that I dubbed “recycling-run-away effect”.

Amongst others I also try to line out why I think that the nuclear waste problem may be a worse problem than the safety of reactors (see also the first post on Fukushima).

Comments are appreciated, here is the draft:

update (06072011) : This blog post is now used as a referrer URL for the game scheme article, thus newer versions of the article and comments will be uploaded more or less regularily. Please note that this offer to our randform readers costs our private money. Since randform is currently purely financed by Tim Hoffmanns income as a math professor, we may eventually be forced to reduce or close this offer, depending on download rate, inflation, etc. Most of the content of the article is also spread on the Azimuth project like the section about the Game environment. The Azimuth updates are usually more current.

->version July 06, 2011

The most essential content article of the article was presented on July 1st at the open knowledge conference 2011 in Berlin:

Talk: “Testing new toy economies/political structures in MMOGs” at slideshare.net

older versions of the article:

->version May 25, 2011

->version april 26, 2011

-> New economical schemes in games, version march 25, 2011

Last time when I was in Göttingen I found a poster at the math department documenting an art science collaboration between mathematics professors William Thurston, Kazushi Ahara and Sadayoshi Kojima on one side and a team around clothing designer Issey Miyake, notably including chief designer Dai Fujiwara of Issey Miyake (here a link to a partial version of the poster, see also absnews article by Jenny Barchfield). A result of this collaboration is that the Issey Miyake Fall-Winter 2010-2011 ready-to-wear collection is inspired by the geometrization conjecture.

From the poster:

In the mid-October of 2009, Prof. Thurston showed us the detail drawings of the “8 Geometry Link models as Metaphor of the Universe” They inspired us to make the collection based on them, accompanying design study with rope and toile. Considering the body itself as the Universe, we have added our own interpretation of beauty to them. The new perception of the body shared by all the members of the team resulted in the discoveries of new lines and forms, which were then applied to textile, color and detail studies. Thus the new collection has taken shape steadily, revealing its whole picture eventually. To sum up the exchange with Prof. Thurston led us to find a completely new kind of beauty and embody it in clothing. This mission was, as it were, an odyssee to explore the Universe with infinite imaginations.

The geometrization conjecture roughly says (I am not an expert on this) that a three dimensional volume form without boundary (a two dimensional analog of such a form would be for example the surface form (i.e. the “skin”) of a ball or the surface form of a doughnut) can be decomposed into “pieces” which have one of 8 characteristic “geometric structures”, which means roughly that in a small neighbourhood of any such “piece” there is – out of only 8 characteristic ways – one specific way to measure length. A theorem states that any three dimensional (oriented) volume form without boundary can be obtained by cutting a “thick” (that is instead of a rope take a ribbon) link out of a three dimensional sphere. Thus you can characterize special types of three dimensional volume forms (here: “the pieces”) by assigning a link to them. This is – by what I understood sofar- why there are 8 links (or link models) on the poster – they characterize the 8 types of possible “pieces”, which built up three dimensional volume forms without boundary.

Why do they call these 8 links “Metaphor of the Universe”? I can only make wild guesses, which sound rather like science fiction than science: Maybe if you imagine the space of the universe to be eventually such a three dimensional volume then by cutting it into pieces (may be along black hole horizons huh?!) and “measuring distances” (determine a metric) one could make deductions about the actual form of the universe? Or – reversely by making assumptions about the form of the universe (like e.g. that its space is a three sphere) one may get informations about what could be inside black holes…given that one finds all black holes…(this is just a funny joke).

But joking aside – I think they call it Metaphor of the Universe because these simple 8 links may be used to describe quite complicated things.

->wikipedia link math and fiber arts