[P2P-F] important advance in network theory approaches

Mon Sep 5 06:54:38 CEST 2011

Dear TOmas,

This is quite important in my opinion with network theory finally including
human volition and abandoning reductionism,

I really hope you can look into this for discussion at our blog,

see http://gfbertini.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/wisdom-about-crowds/ ;
http://www.economist.com/node/18584096?story_id=18584096&fsrc=rss

 Existing models of crowd behaviour do just that. They treat moving masses
of humanity as though they were fluids. This works, up to a point. But it
often fails to predict the changes that happen as a crowd’s density
increases and its movement becomes chaotic. That is why Mehdi Moussaid of
Paul Sabatier University, in Toulouse, and his colleagues have made a
radical innovation. Instead of treating the individual human beings in a
crowd as if they were molecules, they have treated them as if they were
human beings. They have, in other words, given them volition. Of course, the
objective of someone in a moving crowd is usually fairly simple—to get
somewhere and then stay there. But it is an objective, nevertheless.

-- 
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20110905/9404afc7/attachment.htm 