Power of the iMob | Chatham House: Independent thinking on international affairs

Power of the iMob | Chatham House: Independent thinking on international affairs: There are some grand claims for the movements. As The New York Times said: ‘Dot-org politics represents the latest manifestation of a recurrent American faith that there is something inherently good in the vox populi. Democracy is at its purest and best when the largest number of voices are heard, and every institution that comes between the people and their government – the press, the political pros, the fund-raisers – taints the process.'

Education in Peru: Error message | The Economist

Education in Peru: Error message | The Economist: An evaluation of the laptop programme by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found that the children receiving the computers did not show any improvement in maths or reading. Nor did it find evidence that access to a laptop increased motivation, or time devoted to homework or reading. The report applauded the government for providing much-needed hardware: less than a quarter of Peruvian households had a computer in 2010. But it now needs to improve teacher-training and the curriculum, said Julian Cristia of the IDB. Above all, the classroom environment needs to change.

We have argued that a sociologically plausible model of the micro-mechanism underlying complex network emergence needs to meet the
following criteria. First, the locus of decision making about network changes should be at the level of individual actors. Second, individual
decisions should be derived from the optimization of individual goals based on bounded rational decision heuristics. Third, individual agents
should use only local and imperfect knowledge of network characteristics to make decisions. Finally, the model should not trivialize conflicts
between agents' interests with regard to the network changes they prefer.


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ASC: Foundations: Defining 'Cybernetics'

ASC: Foundations: Defining 'Cybernetics': "Cybernetique= the art of governing or the science of government"