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(17 reviews)
Author: Mitchel Resnick
ISBN : 0262680939
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Format: PDF
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How does a bird flock keep its movements so graceful and synchronized? Most people assume that the bird in front leads and the others follow. In fact, bird flocks don't have leaders: they are organized without an organizer, coordinated without a coordinator. And a surprising number of other systems, from termite colonies to traffic jams to economic systems, work the same decentralized way. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams describes innovative new computational tools that can qhelp people (even young children) explore the workings of such systems--and help them move beyond the centralized mindset.
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- Series: Complex Adaptive Systems
- Paperback: 183 pages
- Publisher: A Bradford Book (January 10, 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0262680939
- ISBN-13: 978-0262680936
- Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 5.8 x 8.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds Free Download
I picked up this book while browsing the Computer Science section. The first line on the back cover drew me in: "How does a bird flock keep its movements so graceful and synchronized?" Unfortunately, this question (and others similar) was never really answered in the book. Rather than an intellectual or philosophical discussion of how organized behaviors develop from non-centrally-controlled systems in real life, the book seems to focus on why it happens in simplified computer simulations. The book is really about looking at organized behaviors from a decentralized perspective - using computer simulations to aid in this perspective. (Termite mounds, for example, aren't created by a "seed or lead" termite, they're in fact created by the behaviors common to individual termites, and the interaction of those termites with the environment, as is demonstrated in a simplified computer simulation.)The book focuses a great deal on workings of the StarLogo programming language, which is not included but is downloadable (more on this later). The programming language allows users to simulate massively parallel systems. The book includes many code samples, programming notes and descriptions of how the simulations progress at run time. Discussions of resulting organized behaviors lie almost completely within the scope of the software simulations, but are very interesting nonetheless (although it will likely leave you wanting more). After only the first simulation (regarding slime mold), I found myself at the computer to download the software. Which brings me to my next point...
You won't find the software at the location specified by the book. It appears that the original StarLogo language was written for the Mac, and was renamed MacStarLogo.
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