Thursday, February 24, 2005

Global Consciousness Project


Here is a recent article about the "Global Consciousness Project" at Princeton. This work (if true) suggests, remarkably, that statistical deviations from randomness (and correlations) among the behaviors of a widely separated network of random number generators are strongly correlated with (and often predate!) major world events. The first stunning "correlation" occured four hours prior to the 9/11 attacks; since then the project has carefully documented and studied hundreds more. I have not looked at the details of the work yet, but -- again, if the results are real, and undoctored -- the implications are staggering and deep indeed.

Here are the links to the article and project homepage.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Breathtaking views of collective behavior


Canon's official website has posted an extraordinary sequence of images taken by photographer Manuel Presti of the collective dynamics of flocking birds. Simply the best such sequence I have ever seen. Remarkable beauty and elegance, and a breathtaking display of emergence in nature!

Monday, December 06, 2004

Tao of Photography

For those interested in the overlap between science and art in general, and complex systems theory and photography in particular (all five of you! ;-) here is a resource list I've started to compile.