[p2p-research] Thermoeconomics + Re: Ontologies

[marc fawzi]

Hi Paola,

Your paper definitely shines a light on an important area in engineering of
complex open systems, i.e.: the need for continuous maintenance.

While there is a need for continuous maintenance of ontologies, language
itself seems to be self-maintaining, and that's evident by the fact that we
are able to use it with the same degree of success after many hundreds of
years, which implies that we're continuously maintaining our internal model
of it.

I believe that the mechanisms underlying our biological immune system are
the same mechanisms, algorithmically speaking, as the mechanisms that
maintain our internal model of language. This means that language has shared
biological basis, which explains how it's able to maintain itself without a
central authority.

In the case of the immune system, we (humans) have adapted to foreign
proteins like the sugar protein in dairy and red meat. Primates have not.
Their immune system attacks those proteins which get absorbed into their
tissue, thus causing inflammation etc, which is why they avoid dairy and red
meat.

So the design of an 'adaptive immune system' is, IMO, a key piece in the
puzzle for self-maintaining complex [open] systems, including ontologies.

So instead of listening to people like Clay Shirky who've suggested that
ontologies are a dead end we should be looking at how our biological immune
system works (and why it fails when it does), how it learns to resist viral
infection, and how it adapts to distinguish between pathogens and food, so
we may gain clues as to how we may design self-healing, dynamic ontologies
that are open to new concepts, modified versions of existing concepts,
disturbance, etc.

That's all I can think of for now as far as ontologies go. I plan to blog
about it in the not too distant future.

The way your paper relates to thermoeconomics, IMHO, is that it highlights
the need for constant maintenance of our information processing capability,
not just our communication channels, so I'd re-phrase the four types of
costs I'm aware of as follows:

When it comes to bits and bytes some of the the physical constraints that
follow from the first and second laws of thermodynamics are:

1. The continuous cost of energy used for powering the hardware at every
point, from desktop to network core, mesh infrastructure or the hardware
landscape, including the communication channels (including the cost of
maintaining the energy generation capacity and adapting it into the future)

2. The continuous cost of energy for the maintenance and adapting of the
hardware at every point, from desktop to network core, mesh infrastructure
or the hardware landscape, including the communication channels. This
includes energy used in the development and manufacturing of new hardware or
the production of replacement parts.

3. The continuous cost of energy for powering our human hardware (or
bioware), including our information processing capability (our brain) and
our communication channels (our senses)

4. The continuous cost of energy for the maintenance and adapting of our
human hardware (or bioware), including our information processing
capability (our brain) and our communication channels (our senses)

--

I plan to get started on the new Thermoeconomics section of the P2P
Foundation wiki later (after the holidays) and I am wondering if your paper
is available under CC license?  What is the copying policy?

I had used copy&pasted physics definitions from a NASA website in my
previous email (in quotations) and I'm not sure what the general copyright
policy is for excerpts, i.e. what is 'fair use' ?

Marc








>
>
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 8:18 PM, <paola.dimaio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Marc
>> thanks for your interest
>> this is the last working draft, it should be the final version
>> let me know what you think
>> p
>
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