Modelling Social Interaction in Information
Systems (MSIIS)
Lectures: 14 lectures, every
Wednesday 18:00-19:30 between 3/9/14 and 3/12/14
Location: Irinyi 218, University of Szeged.
Lecturer: Dr David Hales (www.davidhales.com)
e-mail dave@davidhales.com
Course Overview
Computer systems are increasingly distributed. Networks link nodes that
serve users and carry out computations. Collectively, system level
properties emerge rather than being planned. This is similar to how
human and animal societies operate. In human societies individual goals
and behaviours through interaction generate collective properties such
as norms, laws, markets and government. These properties structure and
shape our world. In animal societies evolved behaviours can solve
complex optimisation problems through individual rule following as
evidenced by the social insects (ants, bees and termites).
Recent innovations such as Bittorrent and Bitcoin show how algorithms
developed with reference to social, economic and biological theory can
change not only the computational networks but also society in general.
In this course we will study both theoretical concepts about social
interaction and case studies of successfully deployed systems that
embody them. We will also critically consider a set of techniques used
to understand and research social interaction such as:
- Artificial life, game theory, evolution and co-evolution
- Agent-based models, cellular automata, complex systems
- Cooperation, networks, collective action, big data.
We will also study pioneers in the area such as John Von Neumann,
Herbert Simon, John Holland, Robert Axelrod and others.
We will critically discuss what good models are and how to go about
constructing them. We will also consider some of the historical
theories of social systems as they relate to information systems.
Prerequisites: The course
assumes some programming ability but no specific computer language will
be mandated. It is also assumed that students will be open to ideas
traditionally outside of computer science such as social science and
economics but no prior knowledge will be assumed of these areas.
Assessment: There will be no formal exam. MSc students will be
assessed through a scientific paper reading in which they choose and
read a paper of interest and then present the main ideas from the paper
to the group. In addition to the paper reading PhD students will be
assessed through a simple programming assignment. Specific details
about the assessment process can be found here: MSIIS-Assessment.pdf
Aims (the course aims to):
- Give students a broad overview of the ways that social
interaction in both social systems and computer systems can be modelled
and understood.
- Equip students with the ability to critically assess existing and
new work within the area of modelling social interaction.
- Provide students with historical context covering some of the
motivations, intellectual traditions, seminal works and people
associated with modelling social interaction.
Objectives (by the end of the
course students will be able to):
- State several significant techniques used to model social
interaction in information systems.
- Understand and describe examples of deployed systems that use
social interaction methods.
- Critically assess and describe some of the major published work
from the scientific literature in the area.
Lectures
Below are listed each lecture sessions and links to related materials.
Papers and books listed in the slides can be found in the books and
papers sections below the lectures section.
1. Introduction and Overview:
Aims and objectives of the course; Overview of different kinds of
modelling and different kinds of social interaction; Outline of some
general concepts such as complexity, emergence, self-organisation,
decentralisation power and control. Software NetLogo, Golly. Slides1.pdf
[date: 3/9/2014]
2. Cellular Automata:
History of CA’s their motivations and interpretations; Examples of 1D
and 2D CA’s. People: John von Neumann, Stephen Wolfram, John Conway,
Chris Langdon. Examples: game of life, different 1D CA’s; ideas of
chaos; Idea of Turing complete CA. Software: NetLogo/Life & 1D
CA's, Golly. slides2.pdf
[date: 10/9/2014]
3. Schelling's Segregation
Model: A more detailed look at the segregation model (shown in
lecture 1). Exploring the behaviour of the model systematically. How
results from the model have been applied to design of a P2P clustering
algorithm. Software: NetLogo/Segregation model. People: Thomas
Schelling. slides3.pdf
[date: 17/9/2014]
4. Evolution of cooperation:
Problem of cooperation in general and how it relates to social systems.
Some concepts from game theory. Presentation of the Prisoners’ Dilemma
game. Detailed look at Axelrod's computer tournaments. People Axelrod. slides4.pdf
[date: 24/9/2014]
5. Bittorrent and cooperation:
Overview of Bittorrent file-sharing protocol; How the protocol relates
to cooperation theory; People: Bram Cohen. Software: Bittorrent. slides5.pdf
[date: 1/10/2014]
6. Social Welfare and
Bittorrent credit dynamics: Idea of a social welfare function;
some simple examples and the people and ideas that inform them. Rawls'
veil of ignorance. Credit dynamics in a bittorrent private community
(BitCrunch model). People: Bentham, Pareto, Rawls, Sen. slides6.pdf
[date 8/10/2014]
7) Agent-based modelling (and
mutli-agent systems): What is agent-based modelling? Examples of
agent-based modelling; Different kinds of agents – reactive, adaptive,
cognitive. How ABM relates to MAS. ABM platforms / languages. Different
kinds of model. The Sugarscape ABM. slides7.pdf
[date: 15/10/2014]
8. Evolution, co-evolution
(and artificial life): Evolutionary algorithms, genetic
algorithms, co-evolutionary systems, interaction structures other than
mean-field, concept of an ESS, evolving cooperation on a cellular
automata, endogenous reproduction, artificial life, cultural evolution,
evolving interaction structures - dynamic networks of evolving
cooperation. People: Tom Ray, Nowak & May, Dawkins, John Holland. slides8.pdf
[date: 22/10/2014]
9. Bitcoin and other
applications. (Guest lecture: Dr Victor Greshenko,
Citrea LLC, Moscow, Russian Federation). Interesting comment on
Bitcoin from 2011. Victor give the following links that reference
things mentioned in his talk: Victor's swarmjs project http://swarmjs.github.io. Hawala http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/terrorist-illicit-finance/documents/fincen-hawala-rpt.pdf.
Ripple https://ripple.com. Lada
Adamic [social network researcher] https://www.coursera.org/course/sna.
Wikipedia as ant-hill http://no-gritzko-here.livejournal.com/22900.html.
Livejournal as ant-hill http://no-gritzko-here.livejournal.com/23712.html
[date: 29/10/2014]
10. Markets (and Money):
What is a market? Textbook supply / demand and equilibrium. Real
markets. Macro and micro models. Continuous Double Auction electronic
markets, ZIP (zero-intelligence-plus) algorithmic trader agents.
Non-equilibrium models, speculation, contagion, El Farol Bar, SFI
artificial stock market. Prediction markets. Money - what is it (why
don't I have any)? Modern money, central banks and local banks.
Theories of value. New P2P money. People: Dave Cliff, Brian Arthur,
Keynes, Hayek, Alan Kirman, Satoshi Nakamoto. slides10.pdf
[date: 5/11/2014]
11. Application of
socio-economic ideas to the design of distributed systems. (Guest lecture: Dr Rameez Rahman,
EPFL, Lausanne, Swiss). See his blog
here. Recent and relevant PhD
thesis here. Interesting blog post about ABM
and Tolstoy. slides11.pdf.
The following papers were referenced in the talk (and are listed below
in the papers section) How
to cheat bittorrent, Effort-based
incentives, Design
Space Analysis. Note also this blog post on
big data and this cartoon on
big data which relate to the debate we had at the end of the
lecture.
[date: 12/11/2014]
12. Student paper reading
assignments. Students each give 10 to 15 mins
presentation plus 5 mins questions on their chosen paper (max 5 slides
if they decide to use slides). A link to the pdf of the slides and
paper is given
here. Also most of the papers are listed in the paper section:
[date: 19/11/2014]
13. Cognitive Agent Modelling;
The reasons and motivation for cognitive agent modelling; BDI
modelling; AgentSpeak
language; (Guest lecture, Dr
Mario Paulucci, CNR Rome & University of Bologna,
Italy). The mindmap of presentation can be found here.This contains
significantly more material than there was time cover in the lecture.
Also see a recent paper related to gossip, reputation and cooperation here. Mario is also co-author
of an entire book on reputation in artificial societies. Details and
review of book here.
[date: 26/11/2014]
14. Student paper reading
assignments. Students each give 10 to 15 mins presentation plus
5 mins questions on their chosen paper (max 5 slides if they decide to
use slides). A link to the pdf of the slides and paper is given here.
Also most of
the papers are listed in the paper section:
- Berta Arpad: The bittorrent p2p file-sharing system: measurements
and analysis. slides.pdf,
paper.pdf
- Gyurky Fruzsina: Economics of BitTorrent communities. slides.pdf, paper.pdf
- Budincsevity Norbert: Public and private BitTorrent communities:
A measurement study. slides.pdf,
paper.pdf
- Danner Gabor: Bulding New Political Actors. slides.pdf, paper.pdf
- Schaffer Laszlo: Minimal-intelligence agents for bargaining
behaviours in market-based environments. slides.pdf, paper.pdf
- Najzer Helga: On the sustainability of BitTorrent-based credit
systems. slides.pdf, paper.pdf
[unpublished original work extending work given in paper]
- Toth Daniel: Simulating Societies using Distributed AI. slides.pdf, paper.pdf
[presented on 10/12/14]
[date: 3/12/2014]
Support Materials
You do not have to read, use or watch all these
things. I
will discuss in the lectures what you might wish to look at. Hence they
a provided as background that allow you explore a topic mentioned in
the lectures that you are interested in.
Books
- Gilbert, N., Troitzsch K. G. (2005) Simulation for the social
scientist. Second Edition. Milton Keynes, Open University Press. [a
book about agent-based simulation for social scientists by leaders in
the field who are both sociologists with extensive computer backgrounds]
- Flake, G. (1998) The Computational Beauty of Nature. MIT Press.
[nice book on self-organisation and other complexity aspects covered or
touched on in many of the lectures]
- Wolfram, S. (2002) A New Kind of Science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram
Media, online at: : http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html
[discussed in lecture 2 on CA's, considered a controversial book by
some, see review in papers section and lecture in video section below]
- Poundstone, W. (1993) Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game
Theory and the Puzzle of the Bomb. Anchor Books, New York. [history of
the PD game and von Neumann. Very interesting for historical background]
- Axelrod, R. (1984) The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books. NY.
[covered in the lecture on the evolution of cooperation. Interesting
discussion of how to apply results gained from computer experiences to
social processes. Highly cited and considered a classic]
- Hobbes, T. (1962) Leviathan. Fontana Library, London. First
published (1651). http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3207
- Kropotkin, P. (1902) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.
[intresting critique of "Social Darwinism" of the time. Many biologists
question some of his arguments] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341
- John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern: Theory of Games and
Economic Behavior, Princeton University Press (1944) [the seminal game
theory book]
- Ridley, M (1997) The Origins of Virtue. Penguin Books [an idea
about how social systems, norms and "morality" can emerge from selfish
evolution involving
groups]
- Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. [seminal book on modern social contract
theory where rationality becomes a basis for a Just society]
- Amartya K. Sen, 1970 [1984], Collective Choice and Social
Welfare, North Holland; Third printing edition. [Nobel prize winner
lays out the relationships between social welfare and many intellectual
traditions and puts his own spin on it]
- Rahman, R (2011) Peer-to-Peer System Design: A Socioeconomic
Approach. PhD Theis, University of Delft, Netherlands. [recent PhD
thesis that includes the work discussed in the lectures on credit
dynamics in private bittorrent communities in addition to other work] http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/pubs/ph_d/rahman-thesis.pdf
- Epstein, Joshua M.; Axtell, Robert (1996). Growing artificial
societies: social science from the bottom up. Brookings Institution
Press [extensive ABM of an artificial society exploring many social
phenoema in an artificial world]
- Dennett, D. C., (1987) The Intentional Stance, MIT Press,
(Cambridge) [philosophical but written for a general audience. Argues
for an intrumental view of the notion of intentional systems - if you
read it you will understand what that means]
- Wooldridge, Michael (2002). An Introduction to MultiAgent
Systems. John Wiley & Sons. [textbook on MAS - which realtes to
more logical based, intellegent agents applied to engineering
applications]
- Daniel Dennett (1995) Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Simon &
Schuster [popular book that argues how abstract evolution might explain
the emergence of life, culture, intelligence etc.]
- Holland, John (1975). Adaptation in Natural and Artificial
Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [considered the seminal book on
modern GA's. But contains much more including all kinds of ideas
related to artificial life and complex adaptive systems. A classic book]
- John Maynard Smith (1982) Evolution and the theory of games.
Oxford University Press [seminal book on the relationship between game
theory and evolution including the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS)
concept]
- E. O. Wilson (1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. [seminal
book on sociobiology - explaining social behavour with biological
evolution. Perhaps still controversial due to interpreting human
social behaviour in this way]
- Koza, J.R. (1992). Genetic Programming: On the Programming of
Computers by Means of Natural Selection, MIT Press. [a standard text on
genetic programming (GP) where programs are evolved to solve problems]
- Boyd, R. and P. J. Richerson. 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary
Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [detailed analysis /
math models applying evolutionary approaches directly to culture rather
than biology]
- Dawkins, Richard (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University
Press [popular science book describing evolution from a "gene's eye"
perspective. Introduces the word "meme" for cultural replicators]
- John Holland (1998) Emergence: from chaos to order. Perseus Books
[a book that introduces various ideas about complex adaptive systems
and how they work]
- Keynes, John Maynard, (1936) The General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money, London: Macmillan [considered one of the most
important books in macro economics]
- Charles Goodhart (1988) The Evolution of Central Banks. MIT
Press. [a historical and functional view of how and why central banks
emerged and what they do]
- W. Brian Arthur (2009) The Nature of Technology: What It Is and
How It Evolves. The Free Press and Penguin Books. [the big picture. I
have yet to study this book but must do so!]
Papers / Articles
- Epstein, J. M. (2008) 'Why Model?' Journal of Artificial
Societies and Social Simulation 11(4)12: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/4/12.html
- Reynolds, Craig (1987). "Flocks, herds and schools: A distributed
behavioral model.". SIGGRAPH '87: Proceedings of the 14th annual
conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques (Association
for Computing Machinery): 25–34. http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~dt/siggraph97-course/cwr87/
- Gardner, Martin (October 1970) Mathematical Games – The fantastic
combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game "life”. Scientific
American 223. pp. 120–123. http://ddi.cs.uni-potsdam.de/HyFISCH/Produzieren/lis_projekt/proj_gamelife/ConwayScientificAmerican.htm
- Schelling, Thomas C. (1971) "Dynamic Models of Segregation."
Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1:143-186. http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/Schelling_Seg_Models.pdf
- Granovetter (1978) “Threshold models of collective behaviour”,
American Journal of Sociology, vol 83, No. 6, 1420-1443. http://cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall10/V22.0480-002/granovetter.78.pdf
- Epstein, J. M. (2002) “Modeling civil violence: An
agent-based computational approach”, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, Vol. 99, Suppl. 3, May 14, 2002, and is available
at http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/Epstein.CivilViolence.pdf
- Axelrod, R. (1997) The Dissemination of Culture: A Model with
Local Convergence and Global Polarization. Journal of Conflict
Resolution, Vo. 41, Issue 2, 203-226. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~axe/research/Dissemination.pdf
- Axelrod, R. (1995) "Building New Political Actors"" in Nigel
Gilbert and Rosaria Conte (eds.), Artificial
Societies: the Computer Simulation of Social Life, London: University
College Press. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~axe/research/Building.pdf
- Cook, M. (2004) "Universality in Elementary Cellular Automata."
Complex Systems 15, 1-40.
http://www.complex-systems.com/pdf/15-1-1.pdf
- Langton, C. G. (1990) "Computation at the edge of chaos". Physica
D, 42. http://www.romanpoet.org/223/langton.edgeofchaos.pdf
- Langton, C. G. (1984). "Self-reproduction in cellular automata".
Physica D 10: 135–144. http://www.iai.uni-bonn.de/III//lehre/vorlesungen/TDWA/WS07/4.pdf
- Gray, L. (2003) Book review of "A New Kind of Science by
Stephen Wolfram." Notices of the AMS vol 50 No. 2: http://www.ams.org/notices/200302/fea-gray.pdf
[a critical review of Wolfram's book on CA's]
- Hatna and Benenson (2012) The Schelling Model of Ethnic
Residential Dynamics http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/15/1/6.html
[empirical study applying model to residential patterns in Israel - how
convincing is this approach?]
- Singh, A. and Haahr, M. (2007) Decentralized clustering in pure
p2p overlay networks using Schelling’s model. In Communications,
ICC’07. IEEE International Conference on, pages 1860–1866. IEEE, 2007. PDF.
[shows how a p2p algorithms was inspired by Schelling's model. Can be a
little confusing in parts]
- L Vu, K Nahrstedt, M Hollick (2008) Exploiting Schelling behavior
for improving data accessibility in mobile peer-to-peer networks.
Proceedings of the 5th Annual International Conference on Mobile and
Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services. http://cairo.cs.uiuc.edu/publications/papers/schelling-camera5.pdf
[here Schelling model is used create a social user model to test mobile
algorithms on]
- Garrett Hardin (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162,
1243-1248. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
- Nash, John (1950) Equilibrium points in n-person games.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 36(1):48-49. http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/events/iap07/Nash-Eqm.pdf
[often cited paper introducing Nash Equilibirum concept - it is quite
mathematical]
- Robert Trivers (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism.
Quarterly Review of Biology. 46: 35-57 http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/Trivers-EvolutionReciprocalAltruism.pdf
[often cited paper introducing the idea of direct reciprocity
in the context of biology and human society]
- Adar & Huberman (2000) Free riding on Gnutella. First Monday,
vol. 5 no.10. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/792.
[often cited article that emperically measures free riding on a popular
P2P filesharing system of the time]
- Cohen, B. (2003) Incentives build robustness in bittorrent, in
1st Workshop on the Economics of Peer-2-Peer Systems. http://www.bittorrent.org/bittorrentecon.pdf
[highly readable overview of BT system by its creator]
- Piatek, M. et al (2007) Do incentives build robustness in
BitTorrent? 4th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design &
Implementation (NSDI) http://www.michaelpiatek.com//papers/BitTyrant.pdf
[introduces a BT client variant called BitTyrant that tests the
incentive claims of BT]
- Locher, T. et al (2006) Free Riding in BitTorrent is Cheap.
HotNets 2006 http://www.disco.ethz.ch/publications/hotnets06.pdf
[introduces a BT client variant called BitThief to show how to freeride
against other BT clients]
- Pouwelse, J. et al (2005) The bittorrent p2p file-sharing system:
measurements and analysis. In Proceedings of the 4th international
conference on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS'05), Springer-Verlag, Berlin,
Heidelberg. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.59.3191
[an early BT measurment paper giving detailed analysis of the BT
ecosystem at that time]
- Hales, D., Rahman, R., Zhang, B., Meulpolder M., and Pouwelse, J.
(2009) BitTorrent or BitCrunch: Evidence of a credit squeeze in
BitTorrent? Proc. of the 5th Collaborative Peer-to-Peer Systems (COPS)
Workshop http://davidhales.name/papers/bitcrunch-2009.pdf
[credit squeeze model as discussed in one of the lectures]
- Rahman, R. and Hales, D., Vinko, T., Pouwelse, J. and Sips, H.
(2010). No more crash or crunch: sustainable credit dynamics in a P2P
community. International Conference on High Performance Computing &
Simulation (HPCS 2010) http://davidhales.name/papers/credit_dynamics.pdf
[elaborated credit dynamics model with both over and under supply of
credit and formal analysis]
- Ian A. Kash, John K. Lai, Haoqi Zhang, and Aviv Zohar. (2012).
Economics of BitTorrent communities. In Proceedings of the 21st
international conference on World Wide Web (WWW '12). ACM, New York,
NY, USA http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/netecon2011/papers/paper19.pdf
[more recent detailed emprical work and "maco-economic" observations of
credit dynamics in a private BT community]
- Huberman, B. and Fang Wu. (2007). The economics of
attention:
maximizing user value in information-rich environments. In Proceedings
of the 1st international workshop on Data mining and audience
intelligence for advertising (ADKDD '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA,
16-20. http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/scl/papers/attention/attention.pdf
[FIXED LINK - based on
discussion at end of lecture 6, I mentioned the idea of
attention economy. Here is a paper about it. Note: when I look at this now I am
not sure this is the paper I thought it was when I mentioned it!]
- Hales et al (2013) Agency in complex information systems – Future
research directions. Unpublished draft part of an EU consultation
report from the NESS project (see Annex 1). pdf. [you might find the
annex 1 interesting as a short overview of agents in computer systems.
Also you might find the proposed research areas of interest].
- Doran, J. (1995) Simulating Societies using Distributed AI. Paper
Presented at Dagstuhl Seminar on Social Science Microsimulation: A
Challenge to Computer Science, Schloss Dagstuhl, May 1-5, 1995. http://www.agent.ai/doc/upload/200402/dora95_1.pdf
[intresting overview of agent work with good references plus brief
overview of the EOS project]
- Nowak, Sigmund, Esam (1995) Automata, repeated games and noise.
J. Math. Biol. 33: 703-722. http://homepage.univie.ac.at/karl.sigmund/JMB95b.pdf
[analysis using replicator theory of evolution of two-state
finite-state machines playing the prisoner's dilemma]
- Nowak, May (1993) The Spatial Dilemmas of Evolution. Int. J. of
Bifurcation and Chaos, Vol. 3, No. 1. 35-78 http://abel.math.harvard.edu/archive/153_fall_04/Additional_reading_material/spatial_dilemmas_of_evolution.pdf
[evolves prisoner's dilemma strategies on a cellular automata. Lots of
pretty patterns plus in depth analysis]
- Tom Ray (1992) Evolution, Ecology, and Optimization of Digital
Organisms. Santa Fe Working
Paper: 1992-08-042 [describes the Tierra system in detail,
where program code evolves to compete for processor and memory inside a
virtual machines]
- Hales, D. & Arteconi, S. (2006) Article: SLACER: A
Self-Organizing Protocol for Coordination in P2P Networks. IEEE
Intelligent Systems, 21(2):29-35 http://davidhales.com/papers/slacer-final.pdf
[how adapting interaction structure
promotes cooperation]
- Santos F. C., Pacheco J. M., Lenaerts T. (2006) Cooperation
prevails when individuals adjust their social ties. PLoS Comput
Biol
2(10) [how adpating interaction structure promotes cooperation]
- Hales, D., Shutters, S. (2012). Cooperation through the
endogenous
evolution of social structure. Proceedings of the Complex 2012
conference in Santa Fe, NM. Dec. 5-7th 2012, Springer http://davidhales.com/papers/complex2012.pdf
[overview of a
number of "cultural group selection" models with a focus on my own take
on these models]
- Aguilar W, Santamaría-Bonfil G, Froese T and Gershenson C
(2014) The
past, present, and future of artificial life. Front. Robot. AI 1:8.
doi: 10.3389/frobt.2014.00008 [recent comprehensive review of
Alife which is a good place to start if you are interested]
- Satoshi Nakamoto (2009) Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash
System. [original bitcoin paper] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- Kirman, A. & N. Vriend (2000), "Evolving Market Structure: A
Model of Price Dispersion and Loyalty for the Marseille Fish Market",
in Interaction and Market Structure, Edited by Delli Gatti, Gallegati
and Kirman , Springer Verlag, Heidelberg [ABM looking at
self-organsed loyalty based on observations of a real fish
market] http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/nvriend/pub/spring1.pdf
- Akerlof, George A. (1970). "The Market for 'Lemons': Quality
Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism". Quarterly Journal of Economics
(The MIT Press) 84 (3) [seminal asymetric information in markets paper]
http://www.iei.liu.se/nek/730g83/artiklar/1.328833/AkerlofMarketforLemons.pdf
- Parsons, S., Marcinkiewicz, M., Niu, J., and Phelps, S. 2008.
Everything you wanted to know about double auctions, but were afraid to
(bid or) ask. Tech. rep., Department of Computer and Information
Science, Brooklyn College. [overview of double action markets for and
by computer scientists] http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~parsons/projects/mech-design/publications/cda.pdf
- Cliff, D. 1997. Minimal-intelligence agents for bargaining
behaviours in market-based environments. Tech. rep. HP-97-91,
Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories, Bristol, England. [Cliff
introduces the ZIP trading <>agent and compares it with the ZI
agent.
Includes complete list of C source code for CDA market and ZIP agent] http://www.agent.ai/doc/upload/200406/clif97_2.pdf
- Das, Kephart and Tesauro (2001) Agent-Human Interactions in
the Continuous Double Auction, Proc. of the Int. Joint Conf. on
Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Seattle, USA [experiments with
human traders and ZIP agents. ZIP can do better] http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-kephart/AgentHuman.pdf
- W. Brian Arthur (1994) “Inductive Reasoning and Bounded
Rationality”, American Economic Review, 84,406–411 [Arthur introduces
El Farol Bar problem - which later become simplied to Minority Game] http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/Papers/El_Farol.pdf
- W. Brian Arthur (1999) Complexity and the Economy. Science 284,
107. [view point article, short summary of approach] http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/1999/arthur1999a.pdf
- B. LeBaron, (2002) “Building the Santa Fe Artificial Stock
Market,” Working Paper, Brandeis University, June 2002. http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/BuildingTheSFASM.BLeBaron.pdf
- F. A. Hayek (1945). "The Use of Knowledge in Society," American
Economic Review, 35(4), pp. 519-530 [a famous article by a famous
economist about how money and markets are a form of self-organising
distributed information system] http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
- Tobias Galla, Giancarlo Mosetti, Yi-Cheng Zhang. (2006) Anomalous
fluctuations in Minority Games and related multi-agent models of
financial markets. arXiv:physics/0608091v1 [survey paper] http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608091v1
- Hales, D., Patarin, S. (2005) How to cheat Bittorrent and why
nobody does. Technical Report UBLCS-2005-12, University of Bologna,
Dept. of Comp. Sci. [attempts to link group selection models of
cooperation with a hypothesis concerning why tit-for-tat might be what
is supporting cooperation in Bittorrent] http://www.informatica.unibo.it/it/ricerca/technical-report/2005/pdfs/2005-12.pdf
- Rahman, R., Meulpolder, M., Hales, D., Pouwelse, J. and Sips, H.
(2010) Improving Efficiency and Fairness in P2P Systems with
Effort-Based Incentives. Proceedings of the IEEE International
Conference on Communications, 23-27th May 2010, Cape Town, South
Africa. [shows how a different view of incentives based on effort can
improve overall performance in some situations] http://davidhales.com/papers/RewriteIncentives.pdf
- Rahman, R., Vinko, T., Hales, D., Pouwelse, J. and Sips, H.
(2011). Design Space Analysis for Modeling Incentives in Distributed
Systems. ACM SIGCOMM 2011. [a general approach for modelling and
discovering novel incentive systems specifically applied to bittorrent
protocal variants] http://davidhales.com/papers/sigcomm2011.pdf
Software
- NetLogo simulation language (which is bundled with many example
models): https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
- Golly cellular automata simulator (includes Conway's game of life
and many others): http://golly.sourceforge.net/
- Bittorrent filesharing client (allows you to download files from
.torrent files and see the different peers you connect to and how much
upload/download you give and get): http://www.bittorrent.com/
- NetLogo Bittorrent simulator by Rotem Ganel. Page contains link
to
NetLogo code and associated analysis paper of the results. I have not
played with this or looked at the code or anaysis in detail. However it
looks very interesting: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~rg5/recentwork
- If you want to run and compete in core wars tournaments start
here - I've never used this: http://www.corewars.org/
- Software exists to run Tom Ray's Tierra system - again I've not
explored this: http://life.ou.edu/tierra/
- You can download the bitcoin client from here (note
cryptocurrencies can go down as well as up!): http://bitcoin.org
Videos
Podcasts
- If you are interested in economics then you could do worse than
subscribe to the EconTalk podcast. This podcast presents weekly
interviews with some of the world's leading economists (generally)
speaking in plain language about their ideas: http://www.econtalk.org/
Blog posts