Internet Dataflow, exchange of information in the digital but also in the analog biological world is the crucial and central element, developed in the evolution of nature, bringing about the “digital society”. Yet the question arises, how this new form of society will look like: Within the current discourses concerning digital development also critical notions regarding a “digital society” are articulated, as among others by Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of the internet.

Fundamentally the understanding has to grow, that intelligence and its evolution is a natural process, linked to the “evolutionary impulses of nature” and thus not standing above the natural laws: All development in nature holds an organic element of non-control and openness towards the system created, a kind of “self-destructive” element, which allows on one hand evolution (see also: emergency theory) and on the other hand the possibility of extinction of those branches of nature’s organic development that become futile.

“Any order is ultimately in interaction with chaos and only thus evolving. Otherwise it is extinct” (nikunja).

Thus the question of how the future society deals with the digital intelligence, which enables technological developments, but also the cultural and spiritual evolution of mankind as such, is directly linked to the question, how and by what authorities the flow of digital information is being generated, sustained, guaranteed and controlled. This question is so important, that it may decide on the future of humanity: If new societal developments and a collective evolution takes place or if this branch of the “evolution of nature” fails and thus will be extinct.

According to the theory and principles of Interactive Matter, a new perception of matter, the universe and evolution as such would dawn: Evolution and natural process do not happen on a linear time-line but in a multi-field phenomenological environment, which moves away from an assembly/combination of positions and values, to an understanding and application of transposition and Interactive Matter, as a trans-physical, trans-social and trans-medial reality.

On Interactive Matter

Interactivity usually is defined by an effect, or the succession of effects. They are perceived binary, linear and on one timeline. In the course of the last 20 years Swiss-­French Artist Nikunja developed the artistic and philosophic concept of Interactive Matter as a fundament for artistic, natural and spiritual evolution and relates to the comprehension of interaction as matter to be creatively formulated and experienced. Interactive Matter is perceived as a multilayered dynamic field environment in a static condition of time and volume between zero and infinite, simultaneously macro-­ and micro-­cosmic. Nikunja's artwork allows the direct experience of Interactive Matter as spreading between analog and digital reality.

Interactive Matter is the totality of tension, space, rejection, and attraction emerging in the present between two or multiple objects, subjects, materials, ideas, causalities, histories, media, universes, worlds, personalities, etc. on a physical, psychological and spiritual level.

On History as read Evolution

The illusionary perception of “history” as evolution on a linear timeline, with the idea of a “travel” from worse to better, from primitive to complex, as the ideal of civilisatory and biological evolution, principally comes from the scientific practice, that one conclusion leads to another and thus one may read into that an evolutionary logical development; only nature and the universe do not fully correspond to the human mind and its analytical logic, which in its simplicity can only exist by excluding options “beyond the module of the applied system/discipline”. This does not mean, that the analytical instrument and mindset is to be neglected: Linear History as a concept and as a tool to approach complex developments is indeed helpful - but is frequently being misused to determine and defend established power structures and their social applications. Yet at the same time, the post-modern notion of a fragmented history also reinforces the acceptance of the status-quo, as this fundamental distrust in the idea of societal progress tends to generate a passive – often resignative – attitude.[1]

As such History can be – and often is – either a tool of utter conservatism or one of passive acceptance – and is thus irrelevant for the readability of evolution of humankind, the universe or any organism or event in biology, sociology, philosophy, art and science, as long as it is understood as a static and authoritative concept.

Evolution in digital society

To allow evolution in a digital society, the flow and generation of information needs a space of no-control, a principle of freedom, “Split Authority” (nikunja) and “Autonome Zone”[2] which allows the continuous evolution of the system. As hackers evolved from a menace to the system to the guarantees of its security and development, society as such needs to accept the strange, foreign, even the self-destructive as an evolutive element: Not only in its analog but also in its digital systems. This politics of the “Opened Circle” is a necessary element for evolution and survival, as can teach us the practices and conditions in the original African societies at the origin of manhood and its philosophy of UBUNTU (means kindness):

“Utmost respect had to be given to the stranger, visiting the community, since (s)he will allow us to adapt to unknown condition and thus allow survival! “ (ubuntu)

If, on the contrary, the fear of this political, social and cultural application leads to the desire of “total control” of the flow and the generation of information, a “repressive, fascist, Oedipus Rex – system” (nikunja) will be established, making any evolution, may it be digital or analog, impossible: As in nature, the continuous degeneration by the procreation inside of the same family leads to failure, destruction and extinction.

A possible key to the necessary evolution away from such stagnating and oppressive concepts (the present states of capitalism, democracies, the concept of nations - all at their beginning also positive concepts) may be seen in the awareness and consciousness of Interactive Matter, where the free-flow of information beyond a dominating ruling authority implies a shift of the guaranteeing authority of the moral and ethical values in society: Whereas so far, historically and politically, fundamental moral, ethical and spiritual values had been necessarily guaranteed by a ruling authority from the chief and shaman in tribal and clan organized societies up to the disastrous implication of “ideals” by ideological fascist and communist systems, religious organizations, racist states and ideologies, etc. in the 20^th Century with its devastating wars and millions of deaths, clearly demonstrating the complete failure of these systems as such for any longer evolution, now this guaranteeing authority and thus responsibility is clearly shifting in the democratic societies to the subjective environment and awareness of the individual.

To allow this necessary evolution of freedom and moral responsibility in the individual, humankind needs to take the chance to free the flow and exchange of information from economical and political power interest, renew the democratic system away from a party-system, and determine a form of general distribution of the generated fortune (for example the worldwide universal income for any human being, a true task for a real social world bank as mere distributor), for otherwise the generation of fortune by the colonization and theft of intelligence by non-and trans-governmental bodies will lead to the above described disaster of the “Closed Circle”.

The concept of Interactive Matter as a concept of social awareness and of trans-personality by the digital as expanded analogon provides the possibility to enlarge the understanding of democracy and develop new political and electoral processes.

Thus the vision for the “future digital society” is the trans-national one world society, transcending finally the disastrous effects of the post-colonial periods, born from aristocratic greed’s and still continued by the greed of the contemporary monetary aristocracy, misusing the systems of nation and currency and hindering a healthy creative progressive evolution.

Governments would be mere bodies of community services and not generative bodies of power, ideology and fortune.    

Will it be paradise? No, but this situation will allow finally humanity and the individual human being to grow into a constant creative body and spiritual transcendence beyond firm systems, allowing constant evolution of human intelligence, technology and physical matter, may it be generated by digital or analog means.

[1] In relation to postmodernism see: Liberal Democracy as the End of History, Fukuyama and Postmodern Challenges, Christopher Hughes, New York: Routledge, 2012.
[2] TAZ – Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, Hakim Bey, Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2003 (1985). S.95.

By David Simon-Vermot and Nikunja

In his work on what he called “Semiophysics” at the time (1988), René Thom introduced the cognitive viewpoint into physics by trying to develop a science of meaning on the line of his “catastrophe theory” which was essentially a theory of physical morphogenesis. The basic intention was to reconcile modern mathematics and physics with the traditional conception of natural philosophy. The recent developments in quantum physics and their philosophical interpretations lead back to this basic idea. It is thus shown how the formalized language of mathematics cannot only be combined with spatio-temporal aspects of the physical world, but can also serve the definitory precision of concepts such as matter and information, respectively.

In order to think of DIGITALISATION FOR A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY this contribution examines the sources of system theory and digital technologies by tracing them back to foundational principles of civilizations, their constitutional societal orders and belief systems:

 Large-scale social changes followed from the adoption of new media such as the establishment of digital technologies and the introduction of new branches of science such as system theory. Both may be regarded from a media theoretical meta-assumption of a closed system which acts on an equilibrium of thoughts and concepts with a distinguished rule:  whenever one element vanishes from certain cultural emanations, it pops up in another branch of civilization (arts - sciences - technology - religion).

The present article /talk shall reflect perceptual circumstances, cognitive rearrangements and knowledge transfer which lead to a) system-theory and the aim for a “logico-mathematical science of wholeness” as claimed by the theoretical biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) who introduced “general system theory” (GST) and b) the invention of the world wide web (www) as a parallel establishment of a virtual whole, the digital copy of the real world. 

RELIGION and TECHNOLOGY are two aspects of a magic position, a couple which always appears together. In this dual regard geometry features on the one side "a world-creation-technology and on the other side as sacred expression of the „holy whole“. Neolithic figures and patterns of transcendence in medieval mosques and architectural elements of gothic cathedrals are most evidently witnessing this double feature.

Thus geometries provide tools for modeling the world; cf. Bertalanffy’s follower, the designer Buckminster Fuller (1895 -1983) called his strategy to reveal „Nature’s Coordinate System“ Synergetics. Bertalanffy himself recognized the need for a „gebilde“ to think about relations in complex systems. He defined the principle of the organized system as an “open system” and introduced the notion of “flux equilibrium” which may be compared with the concept of fluxus by astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). This geometrical concept concludes the intention of the creational principle, not as arbitrary motion, but creational motion which is the underlying principle of emergence. For this description prior to the development of digital graphics no descriptive geometry was available. Here we assume that also the introduction of system theory may be seen in connexion with the lack of suitable geometrical objects for modeling complex systems, due to the development of higher mathematics, carried out with focus on abstract, logical inquiries of geometry, whereas the training of the appropriate outlook has been neglected. Geometry as original tool for reasoning about ontologic positioning which enables logic compositions of relations for investigations on phenomena in nature became more and more obsolete since it was replaced by purely abstract algebraic geometry. Here it will be argued that the „useless“ abstract geometry was replaced by different kinds of reasoning such as gestalt-theory and system-theory.— How are they related and where is the dual of magic position identifiable?

The magic position pair aspect includes also to think of mythological and metaphysical aspects connected with the technological functions of the internet. Here a brief revision of  the contemporary realization of the ancient Greek Deus ex Machina shall be given in regard to different religious belief systems including particular dreams of mankind previously attributed to the gods, - such as „ubiquitousness“, the „eternal life“ and „the all-seeing-eye“.

Finally the newly developed digital 3D animated geometry based on the Penrose Pattern as 2D slice of the 5-dimensional space - which Henri Poincaré considered as appropriate for Group Theory - shall be presented as depiction system of dynamic relations and interference in motion up to higher orders. This complex interacting digital geometry model of higher dimensional spaces which works like a a machine matches Poincaré’s model of the universe and reconnects with the previously generally admitted idea of the all permeating quintessence. Here it shall be proposed for applications to visualize complex systems.

Description of the research problem

Are the profiles of attention/interpretation/intention of individuals algorithmically auto-induced under Mediatized Capitalism?

Theoretical framework

From the hype of web 2.0 paradises, the world seems to be running on data. People have bowed in cascades to the magnificent “disguised as free” exchange. Instead of inter-defined social situations individuals are mostly “running after the” never-ending fluxes of today’s social configuration. Experience is being restructured through material and immaterial processes, in an overwhelming part - in social production and partly also in social reproduction - autonomous of fleshy creators. In neoliberalism, capitalism becomes not simply another media (Fuchs, 2007), capitalism is the media, and mediatization becomes the pivot of social ordering, strongly decreasing the demos’ transformative action possibilities.

Acknowledging the mediated construction of reality that the becoming of a datafied/interconnected materiality and ecosystem imports to the social ordering of the quotidian (Couldry and Hepp, 2017). And, drawing upon a view of the present endless cross-contamination and endless refeedings of society’s communicative processes (Hall, 1982), the emergence of a new code is perceived in the social configuration we live by/in/on. A roaring code that rarifies and reifies our social realities, from sender, through channel, to receiver; from production, through distribution, to consumption. Communication became too noisy: “my message” is everyone else’s noise, as the messages for all the others are my noise and my deafness. Listening is almost impossible. Communication returns to its historic unidirectionality, not allowing for any hysteric feedback loops: it is a specialty of some who can gather literacies, access and resources, the medium ends up with the messages and the exclusive participation of a few. Voice for the vast majority is rarified. Lastly, communication tries to modulate the social practices and representations of recipients, reifying conventions of legitimacy, colonizing attentions and guiding intentions, and closing us in refeeding each flux and facilitating the unending iterations of the process. This “Information and Communication Overload” “blinds” individuals to alternative ways of being and doing. Our senses become thus colonized, leaving us only with the ability to “think it trough” in our “inner conversations” in refeeding the system.

With communication being the settler of realities’ ordering, but also the deranger of the social, more than ever before, the individual becomes both as pivotal as negligible. Though numbed by the speed and complexity of this new order - where listening, seeing and talking becomes very difficult - people, nevertheless, "smell things". Looking beyond individuals representations and actions becomes unavoidable - into their cognitive working and processing (Archer, 2012) (Jenkins, 2004); into which figurations (Hepp, 2014) impend upon them and the importance/questioning individuals give/make to such figurations, in the process of reframing the world. Rather than which Media Effects are determining what, we must analyze what “digestion” with which absorptions/eliminations/reframings result from the intense Media Reflections on individuals “habitus”: what rearrangement occurs in individuals’ cognitive system and with which consequences to society (Scott, 2011) (DiMaggio, 2003)?

Methodological framework

An interdisciplinary methodology with a deeper contribution from the observed individuals is here proposed. Simply put, we want to know what “hits” people daily, what grabs their attention, what public issues and private troubles (Mills, 1959) they work daily with, through which mitigations and operabilities.

For this purpose we will align with a mixed methods approach: first, individuals’ quotidian will be auto-characterized (Socratic Questioning) in three non-intrusive phases: 1 diary of the daily “hits”; 1 exo-classification sheet of the “hits”; 1 endo-classification sheet of personal reflexivity on the “hits”. This methodology will promote reflexivity in successively contemplation, analysis, and comprehension.Thus, we will mobilize tools from Pedagogy and Psychology, while operationalizing Sociological and Communicational frameworks and concepts. During the same period of time under which subjects are observed, we will proceed with a systematic construction of a database of media trends (all media, new and old). The last source of triangulation will be the fixation of the life histories of the individuals under analysis. This approach will allow for the dismembering of the “inner conversations” and reflexivity, thus for a clearer view of the alterations in individuals’ cosmovisions and reworkings of the “individually operable”.

An understanding of how/why the intensity of the mediatization of the social is catalyzed/contradicted by individuals and with which inner/outer readjustments in validating operable figurations and ways of acting is thus achieved. This is of extreme relevance for it is individuals’ pivotness, as an inexorable gate of Mediatized Capitalism, which primarily keeps feeding the new order.

Expected contributions and results achieved so far

No findings yet. The project is near the end of research design.

This project theoretical contribution rests in a rereading of present times as those of a Mediatized Capitalism. We bridge to major processes of social ordering that came to its maximum strength with the becoming of todays’ fully and deeply interconnected social configuration - the process of mediatization, deepened into “deep mediatization”, and the process of capitalism, deepened with neoliberalism. Both symbiotically growing and spreading one on the other through society.

Also, theoretically, we propose a reanalysis of media embedding with society at large, and, consequently, propose a revaluation of the Media Effects paradigm and all its instances in favour of a conception of the dominance of a Media Reflections paradigm, with a prominence of more micro-relational processes rather than macro-structural ones.

Methodologically we will mobilize a novel interdisciplinary approach with technical contributions from Pedagogy and Psychology and conceptual contributions from Sociology and Communication Studies. In addition, we bring individuals fully to the fore.

Only through this integration of theoretical and methodological can we characterize and understand the centrality of individuals in the reconfiguration of today’s societies.

Summary:

The Floating Island Project and the collaboration between the French Polynesia government and the Seasteading Institute reflect our increasing embracement of interconnectedness in a complex world. Where emerging events that have the capacity to radically transform human societies blossom in a bottom-up way through networks of direct collaboration among diverse components of a social system. Networks, dynamism, diversity, harmony and local interactions….It seems that human politics is finally shifting towards what nature long ago became an expert at. By recognizing information processing tendencies and clustering in human interactions, we can learn how to harness the social and environmental complexity of the economically and culturally diverse environment the Floating Island will have. Nature can teach how to navigate space faster, cheaper and more comfortably. But, most importantly, it can also help us create the effective environments for solutions to spontaneously emerge. This is now possible with better information processing in political technologies. With a politics closer to nature. A politics of harmony.

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The Floating Island Project is a floating city that will be built from scratch in the waters of French Polynesia, after the Seasteading Institute[1] signed an agreement Memorandum of Understanding with the French Polynesia government at the beginning of 2017 to create a special economic zone with political autonomy, in exchange of joint efforts in combatting the effects of global warming which are making some pacific islands to sink and propelling the economy of the region.

My research studies the role of network technologies in the emergence of the Floating Island Project and its mechanisms of self-organization from the perspective of complexity science. For example, the role that the internet has played in bridging geographically distant political and business actors and creating a network of multiple layers with nodes all across the world. Similarly, how the internet allowed the Floating Island to be conceived by providing a means to survey the community interested in inhabiting the floating city and also by crowdsourcing investment. In other words, the ways in which network technologies have facilitated the self-organization of political interactions.

In addition to this, I resort to ethnographic research, digital ethnography and semi-structured interviews to conceptualize the role that the internet might also play in the future of the project, as it is envisioned as a Silicon Valley in the Pacific (Quirk, 2017, Seasteading, 2014), that aims at increasing the diversity and helping the environment with practical projects in association with information-based economies. It is important to note that even the infrastructure of the settlement has internet at its core, as many of the interested individuals in becoming reseadents noted as an important decision-making point before moving to the Floating Island that high internet speed was a requirement (Seasteading, 2014). Hence, the research also examines the role that the internet and network technologies play in the future interactions of the Floating Island. This includes considerations around automation, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, data dashboards for decision-making, technological self-organization of information systems in public places.

On a conceptual level the ontology of complexity drives the research on the Floating City. Complexity sheers light on how to contribute to guide the political organization of Floating City and its interactions with host nations in ways that mutually benefit them and maximize their autonomy, at the same time that provides a harmonic global environment for seasteadsComplexity has examples of approaching cities as evolutionary and far-from-equilibrium complex systems (Bryn, 1998) (Batty, 2008). My research studies the self-organizing mechanisms from where the Floating City Project is emerging. For instance, the role of the Seasteading Institute in acting as a dissipative system that, in the words of Harvey and Reed (1994), imported energy from the immediate environment and transformed into complex internal structuration.

Some authors claim that it is not possible to try and anticipate the rules of a seastead before its creation and that the way seasteads organize should base on trial and error experience (Taylor, 2010). However, a reading from complexity sciences would state that when it comes to complex systems where outcomes depend on nonlinear interactions among components in multiple levels of a system the arrow of time of thermodynamics places a crucial role. Hence trial and error in the face of bringin what coyld be seen as utopia to reality is a very big risk. In this case complexity can provideas the basis to conceptualize how to guide the self-organization of the Floating City in ways that can harness the economic, cultural, technological and political complexity of the island.

There is a relation between the possibility for societies, in this case a floating city, to self-organize and the quest of transcending hierarchies of power associated to the nation-state, increasing the relevance of local interactions. The research explores heterarchical topologies for decision-making using network technologies and contextualizes the discussion in association to the concept of forking in open-source environments. However, it addresses the complex interactions that play a role in the emergence of the Floating Island Project. Seasteading is seen as a response to harnessing complexity. The literature review shows that although complexity theory can explain the phenomenon, there is a gap in the literature of complexity and politics when addressing this emergent and libertarian phenomenon in politics. The reason being that most authors who work in this intermediate space do not address libertarianism, anarchism nor polycentric laws, despite that they are closer to complexity than the language of policy and the nation-state used by them. The research aims at stressing that the floating city could as a fork of nation-states and that the politics of network technologies of open source can help to understand the phenomenon. Additionally, that politics of freedom are still relevant nowadays. I will Milton Friedman´s conception of

The construction of the floating island is relevant in at least three domains. Firstly, from the technological point of view, as it can only be developed innovating in the creation of seasteads and given that it might be planned to become a node of internet companies as influential as Silicon Valley (Seasteading Institute, 2014). Secondly, from an ontological and theoretical perspective of complexity science, where complexity finds in the creation of this seasted an object of study that perfectly embodies the principles characteristics and behaviors of a complex phenomenon. And thirdly, from a political point of view that places what seemed as an old utopian anarchic ideal of transcending the nation-state into contemporary practices of radical politics executed with elegant diplomacy involving an existing nation and crowned on the benefits of libertarian markets.

References

The Seasteading Institute, (2014) The Floating City Project. http://www.seasteading.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Floating-City-Project-Report-4_25_2014.pdf

Byrne, D. S. (1998). Complexity theory and the social sciences: an introduction. Psychology Press.

Taylor, B. (2010). Governing seasteads: An outline of the options.

Batty, M. (2008). Cities as complex systems: scaling, interactions, networks, dynamics and urban morphologies.

[1] Described as “The Seasteading Institute is a nonprofit think-tank working to provide a machinery of freedom to choose new societies on the blue frontier.”

The morphological aspects of a system are the shape, geometry, placement and compliance properties of that system.  On the rather permissive construal of computation as transformations of information, a correspondingly permissive notion of morphological computation can be defined: cases of information transformation performed by the morphological aspects of a system.  This raises the question of what morphological computation might look like under different, less inclusive accounts of computation, such as the view that computation is essentially semantic.  I investigate the possibilities for morphological computation under a particular version of the semantic view.  First, I make a distinction between two kinds of role a given aspect might play in computations that a system performs: foreground role and background role.  The foreground role of a computational system includes such things as rules, state, algorithm, program, bits, data, etc.  But these can only function as foreground by virtue of other, background aspects of the same system: the aspects that enable the foreground to be brought forth, made stable/reidentifiable, and to have semantically coherent causal effect.  I propose that this foreground/background distinction cross-cuts the morphological/non-morphological distinction.  Specifically, morphological aspects of a system may play either role.

I will present a memory model that can account for many aspects of the presence of an inner world, ranging from object permanence, episodic memory and planning to imagination and reveries. It is modelled after neurophysiological data and includes many parts of the cerebral cortex together with models of emotion and arousal systems. Attention plays a crucial role as the interface between the inner and the external world and directs the flow of information from sensory organs to memory as well in the opposite direction as top-down influences on perception.  The internal and external world can be seen as two dynamical systems that can be coupled or decoupled in different ways depending on the state of the organism and the task at hand.

The implemented model includes three interacting neural networks that roughly correspond to the ventral, dorsal and prefrontal areas of the cortex. The first component is the identification-network that learns different stimuli as collection of stimulus properties. It operates as a content addressable memory and recalls complete patterns based on partial inputs. The second component is the localization-network. It is similar to the identification-network except that its activity is constrained by a winner-take-all-rule implementing the constraint that binds each input pattern to one particular location, thus avoiding the binding problem. In addition to coding for different locations, this component increases the storage capacity of the identification-component and avoids spurious attractors. The attractors of the identification+localization components stores attended stimuli together with their locations. The final component is a ‘prefrontal’ working memory. It operates as a k-winners-take-all network and allows memories ‘stored’ in working memory to be more easily recalled than other memories.

In addition, there are slower predictive associations that works over time to predict the next state based on the current one. When allowed to run freely, these temporal associations will make the complete system transition between stable attractors over time in a way akin to day dreaming, effectively implementing a default state network. However, the memory system can also be put to use in a goal directed way. By allowing a general arousal system to increase the gain modulation, the system will instead replay experienced sequences to produce recall of episodic memories. This property can be used instrumentally for vicarious trial-and-error by allowing the sequence to run until a goal is reached, which will activate a value system. Several such forward sweeps can be used to select the course of action that leads to the highest expected value.

The role of morphological 'computation' in embodied cognition is usually addressed from the perspective of individual agents, i.e. how do an agent's bodily materials, movements, etc contribute to its cognitive processes. But the body of course also plays a crucial role in many social interactions, not least the communication/recognition of intentions between interacting agents. The talk how this affects human-machine interactions in cases where the interacting agents' morphologies are radically different (e.g. people interacting with cars) as well as cases where morphologies have superficial similarities (e.g. human-humanoid interaction), but the underlying bodily processes are fundamentally different.

Although cognitive and social development are often studied in isolation, many researchers have demonstrated convincingly that cognition and the social environment are inseparable components of development. For instance, the social context plays a crucial role in many facets of cognitive development. Critically, the mechanisms by which social interactions impact cognitive development remain poorly understood. Here, we present a dynamic field model that elucidates the neural and behavioral mechanisms by which social interactions contribute to developmental changes in cognition and how these influences are reciprocal in nature.

The goal of our work is to understand the mechanisms by which parental responsiveness impacts the social and cognitive development of term and preterm infants. We present an autonomous dynamic field model that looks about its environment containing multiple virtual objects. This neural system encodes and forms memories for the objects being looked at and captures the looking and memory formation abilities of typically developing and preterm infants and adults. We present several simulation experiments in which a parent model and preterm infant model share the same virtual world. We illustrate that a simple Hebbian learning process within the neural and behavioral systems of the parent and infant models is responsible for changes in how the infant model performs in a memory task and how the models learn to interact with each other.

Introduction

It is known that living things are a type of dissipative systems. A very special class, because they manage to stay far from thermodynamic equilibrium for reasons that are internal to these systems. Living systems are good enough at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. But in the middle, self-organizes, they survive and replicate themselves.

It is in this sense that my proposal is based on the assertion that all these phenomena are possible only if we think that biological information is a key property of life.

The proposal presented, asks researchers to rethink about a new conceptual framework, thus our proposal confronts the question: What are the possible causes that led the origin of life? Most of us know the importance of understanding molecular components and its interactions. However, it is also vital to find out how these chemical compounds were able to produce a dynamic self-organization minimally complex.

On the other hand, it seems that information has become a key concept in many areas of biology such as evolution, ecology, molecular biology, among others. Likewise, it is suggested that many of the most fundamental biochemical processes, within living systems, involve the transfer and processing of information.

Consequently, the concept of temporality is crucial in order to approach and adequate understanding related to the emergence of biological systems. As it is already known, these systems owe their appearance to certain very specific conditions, and I state the importance of approaching biological phenomena with concepts such as processes, timing, irreversibility, information, meaning and other associated notions [1-3].

But the main problem is we do not have yet a universal definition of biological information, clearly addressed and differentiated from, the term used in physics or computer science, for instance.

Our study itself will be focused in the relationship between biological information and biological organization [4].

Methods

My first task will be find ways to measure and quantify how much information is created in the dynamics of some protocellular models found in literature [5].

Moving on to the subject of synthetic protocells, it is important to be aware that not all protocell models would be capable of creating, transmitting and receiving information. It seems reasonable to think that the essence of synthetic protocells doesn’t necessarily offer an extensive diversity of forms of encoding information [6].

Our final task will be to analyze and measure, with these results, changes of biological information within the evolution of bacterial quorum sensing (QS) and find out what could be accomplished by design and implementation of artificial QS devices taking into account this property [7-8].

Results and Discussion

My general idea is that biological information is one of the principles that make possible the emergence of prebiotic world: the dawn of life on Earth may have been caused by early emergence of biological information. This prior emergence of biological information doesn’t necessarily refer to self-replication of information-coding polymers.

My proposal is to address this key property from the perspective of its origins.

I therefore offer a theory suggesting that biological information could be a causal factor responsible for self-organization phenomena and other fundamental properties of life. I contend that this model of minimal complexity could allow discovery of underlying patterns and principles of life [9-11].

 Furthermore, my approach connects the ontology processes with the analysis of biological phenomena, from the perspective of complex networks theory [12]. Living systems are essentially a molecular dynamic network phenomenon.

This particular dynamic of molecular self-organizing networks, should contain information that has been created, transmitted and processed.

On the other hand, we find that living systems are able to carry and process a variety of information using the same signaling cascade, for example, in the presence of various agonists [13].

Given the factual evidence above, I am able to state with confidence that biological information holds a very unique feature, which is being inherently context-dependent, and something important to point out here is, that these different forms of transferring information, apparently share something in common: they are all related to the “fluctuations” found in the ways they are transmitted.

If I am on the right track, a form to detect and measure the transmission of biological information as fluctuation (any form of fluctuation) could be done through transfer entropy [14].

This gives me a great deal of confidence in my ability to accomplish the same goal with the Quorum-Sensing Systems.

Since there are at least three identified main Quorum-Sensing Networks; Gram Positive, Gram Negative and one I refer as Universal. I will continue working on my research to decode and understand the transmission of language present in molecular mechanisms [15].

With this end in mind, the first step is to build robust QS circuit diagrams, and to achieve this I will use the computer-aided design software tool for Synthetic Biology and use the quorum-sensing signalling peptides database.

References and Notes

1. Dupré, J. Processes of Life: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology; Oxford University Press, 2012.
2. Floridi, L. The Philosophy of Information; Oxford University Press, 2011.
3. Prigogine, I. From being to becoming; W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1980.
4. Walker, S.I.; Kim H.; Davies P.C. The informational architecture of the cell. Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2016, 374(2063), DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2015.0057.
5. Pahle, J.; Green, A.K.; Dixon C.J.; Kummer U. Information transfer in signaling pathways: a study using coupled simulated and experimental data. BMC Bioinformatics 2008, 9, 139, doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-9-139.
6. Tanaka, S.; Fellermann, H.; Rasmussen S. Structure and selection in an autocatalytic binary polymer model. Europhysics Letters 2014, 107 (2), 28004 DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/107/28004.
7. Reading, N.C.; Sperandio, V. Quorum sensing: the many languages of bacteria. FEMS Microbiol Lett. 2006, 254(1), 1-11.
8. Sifri, C.D. Quorum Sensing: Bacteria Talk Sense. Clin Infect Dis. 2008, 47 (8), 1070-1076.
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