Future &
Emerging
Technologies
in the
Information
Society
Technologies
programme of
European
Commission
Complex systems research funding
in European Commission
Ralph Dum
[email protected]
Why funding complex systems research?
More
is different:
Interactions
determine
system behaviour
Large scale artificial systems
Are there general
organisational and
functional principles
for such systems?
From individual to collectives:
The Internet - P2P systems
The cell - The brain
Stock market
Culture - Norms
Ant colonies - Ecosystems
The climate
Can we design/build better
functioning systems based on
such understanding?
Why funding complex systems research?
More
is different:
Interactions
determine
system behaviour
Large scale artificial systems
Are there general
organisational and
functional principles
for such systems?
From individual to collectives:
The Internet - P2P systems
The cell - The brain
Stock market
Culture - Norms
Ant colonies - Ecosystems
The climate
Can we design/build better
functioning systems based on
such understanding?
Example of a FET funded project
Self-organising semantics in embodied agents
Can ‘human-like’ language arise in
communicating embodied robots ?
What are the prerequisites for
developing communication?
Grammar  combinatorial systems
Three SONY AIBOs paying attention to an object
FET project: ECAGENT
Interacting swarm-bots
Example of FET funded projects:
Internet -unbounded world of information
‘The Internet is the most complex artificial
computational artefact ever created by man.
It evolves in absence of any central control
guided by the economic interests of
participants’ (Papadimitriou 2001)
Internet is ever growing:
Nodes are constantly
added and removed
FET projects:
EVERGROW
DELIS
An Expanding universe
Funding of complex systems:
EC framework/national programmes

EC Funding within ICT (directorate for information & media)
40Million Euros – FET
 EC Funding outside ICT (directorate for research)
35 Million Euros - NEST
 National funding: EPSRC (10Mpounds), CNRS……
 Coordination activities: ONCE-CS.net
Outlook EC 7th framework programme:
 Complex systems science for socially intelligent IT
 Complex systems ideas taken up in many areas
What does all this have to
do with economics ?
Economy
Economy
The Internet
Information
unbound
Media
Transportation
The ‘physical’
Internet
Convergence of
Systems
Eco system
Sustainability
Power grids
The ‘energy’ Internet
IT drives a novel set of transformations:
What consequences for society and business?
From Individual to Mass and back
Societies of minds
Are Wikipedia, Google, e-bay … ‘social’ cognitive tools?
‘Social computing’ or Anarchy
Mass self-communication
Do blogging, podcasting … lead to ‘after Gutenberg’ era?
-From centralised media/telecoms to P2P participatory Media
-Online diversity versus cultural diversity
Towards an information science of social processes
Bridging human and computational processes
Formal models
Services
Economics
Data + Models +
Computation
Agent-based/
behavioural
economics
AI
Interfaces
Services in the large:
How to manage millions of
online services?
Thank you
Annexes
Annexe:Three signatures of complexity
Sensitivity to parameters
• Input and output not proportional: ‘small change -big effect’
• Positive Feedback loops
• Extreme events dominate the mean: cascading failures, crashes…
‘More is different’
• Emergence: Self-organisation - Collective behaviour
• Multiple levels of description & operation: ‘micro to macro’
‘Complex systems often show simple global behaviour’
Quarks  Bulldozer
‘Pool of possibilities’
Existence of multiple equilibria:
Systems can evolve along several paths – no global optimum
Role of prediction? (experiment versus simulation)