My LT

ants.txt

WEB ANTS:

    - Those of you who remember programming in Logo, that language with the little turtle, might be
      happy to know that it is still alive and well, perhaps in a surprising location.
    - What you see behind me is NetLogo, a modern version of Logo that is used for research into
      multi-agent simulations.
    - I'm here to talk about ants.
    - If you were tasked with emulating how an ant colony forages for food, you might get scared.
      Millions of individuals, exploring the world, it's all very complex.
    - But it really isn't. Individually, ants are very simple. Even dumb. The program behind me
      does that in 100 lines of simple code.
    - An ant walks around randomly until it finds food or pheromones. If it finds pheromones, it
      follows them. If it finds food, it heads back to the colony while laying down pheromones.
    - That is all you need, and you get rich, complex behaviour out of it.
    [RUN DEMO]
    
    - When we build and browse the Web, we too are relatively simple agents interacting to effect
      superbly complex behaviour. But do we understand what we are doing?
    
    - The Web as a whole, as a complex system, has exhibited worrying patterns. Massive surveillance
      is one. A strong tendency to monopoly is another. You know which companies I am talking about,
      and I am not pointing my finger at them. That they exist is an emergent property of the
      system. The system that we build.
      
    - There are valiant efforts to re-decentralise the Web, and I support them, and I think the W3C
      should do a lot more in that area.
    - But if we don't put together the scientific models that explain why we tend towards monopolies
      even if we produce a fully decentralised architecture, which compared to TV we already have,
      then the same simple behaviours will lead to the same result atop different technology.
      
    - I do not have the solutions here, but I do know that complexity and network sciences may help
      us understand why we keep producing massive monopolies that become so big we only get rid of
      them when their intelligence disappears behind their self-created even horizon and they start
      acting crazy.
    - This is a call for action. A call for research into gaining enough Web Science that we can,
      in fact, take control of our ant-like behaviour and put a stop to monopolies.
      
    - Thank you!