The amount of information available about the state of out planet with all its
subsystems increases dramatically. The data come both from direct observations
as well as from computer simulations and more traditional methods. The
representation and structuring of this rapidly changing information flood is a
challenging and unsolved problem. From the theory of chaotic dynamics and the
study of complex adaptive systems we have a sophisticated mathematical and
computational tool-box available regarding global, invariant structures, bifurcations,
analysis and response to external perturbations. These tools have been applied
and tested for the analysis and modeling of a number of
systems in a large variety of contexts. From a different angle they have been
most successfully applied in virtual realities of educational computer games.
Common to both of these examples is that they deal with a closed environment of
theoretical or game pragmatic assumptions and parameters. What is lacking is
some efficient interface to the real world of global dynamics. The technology
for such an interface is currently developed as global communication and
information systems, high speed computer networks, wide are information servers
and other areas of global networks. In this project we made a first attempt to
utilize some of these modern communication, computer, and multi-media technologies
to approach exactly that problem. A pilot project version of this approach
has
been presented as an interactive computer installation EarthStation at the
1991 ARS electronica [27]. Since this framework is very
global and since our main interest is to demonstrate the power of modern
computational tools with respect to adaptability and interactivity, we constantly
updated the models, including some issues of current interest (through news paper
or through segments recorded from news broadcasts or received from the NetNews of
the internet. At the same time we would drop issues which seemed to be no longer
strongly coupled to the global dynamics, which, of course might prove completely
wrong from some future perspective. In the following we want to describe several
of the elements in our installation, which try to integrate generally available
software and services into a useful information and simulation system.
Our concept is mainly based on hierarchical network representations of current
problem areas. Each node of the network corresponds to an object which can be
of a very general type [26],[29],
[30]:
This framework is a natural background for geographic information systems, both static and dynamics. The links that connect these objects can be adapted very easily in a graphic, object oriented programming style and thereby have a great advantage compared to classical world-model programs: The contents and the structure of the simulation and visualization tools can be easily updated as the state of the real world changes and evolves.
Since our EarthStation pilot project in 1991, phase-transitions in the global information network have taken place and are still taking place: In a very qualitative sense one cane notice a difference of the complexity and performance of the Internet and its information servers by asking a random question and then attempting to find the corresponding answer on the Internet. The perception in 1991 was that of a bad encyclopedia: In spite of the vast amount of information that is available, the chance of finding a specific piece of useful information is almost zero. Since then some percolation threshold has been crossed: the probability for finding the answer to a specific question is clearly not close to one, yet, but it is definitely larger than zero. Nevertheless it is clear that the Internet will never become a data base system as we are used to for example in a library: Information on the internet is intrinsically evolving, and not centrally controllable: any provider of information to the network can make a decision to make this information globally available announce it or change the read-permission such that it is only accessible to a specific group. This dynamic and complex feature of information on the global internet has many aspects in common with how information is processed in biological brains.