This page is part of an in-progress commentary by Roger
Frye
on High Altitude
Thinking: The International Informatics Summit.
Computers let us deal with more than 4 or 5 things at once.
An icon for the summit. Demo of school of fish obeying 3 rules. get together, not too close, same direction as neighbors. We see tem schooling. Introduce predators such as Microsoft or terroris event. Now they are zooming all around in a very complex manner. Casti will say more.
Why are we here in Santa Fe instead of another city or state. Three characters: LANL, Citibank, Santa Fe Institute
History of LANL. 1943. War years, Enrico Fermi. 1955 John Psta and Stanislav Ulam. Test model of chain of particles with nearest neighbor interactions. Energy did not spread out uniformly. Solitons, waves. First complexity result. John Brown will say more.
Citibank 1812. Federal bank predecessor. 1980s etc. Latin American Debt Crisis $200B, Savings and Loan crisis $500B. "Bad" Japanese bank loans $500B. John Reid. See panel on Wednesday.
SFI 1984. Catalyze new calaboratory, multidisciplinary projects. Break down barriers between the traditional disciplines. Workshop: John Reid, Roger Jones, Doyne Farmer, Norm Packard, etc.. Doyne and Norm win at roulette, then Prediction company. Joe Breeden here today.
Pictue of momma quail SFI followed by CASA, BiosGroup, Complexica, Prediction, Icosystem, Commodicast, RedfishGroup, Assuratech. Not showing other biotech and anti-terror companies.
E.g., Joint project between LANL, Citibank, other labs. Success understanding credit card delinquencies and bankruptcies. Form CASA, Center for Adaptive Systems, later acquired by HNC, then HNC by Fair Isaac for $810M.
That is the history. What are the issues?
1) Role of government, military problems, national security. As someone said to me, this is a conference on how to deal with the bad guys.
2) Efficiency of businesses and marketplaces. Supply chain, remote sensing, risk.
3) How deal with surprise. Insurance, remote sensing, role of CEO faced with catastrophes.
4) How create and structure business? Building a startup, venture capital, information trnsfer.
5)Intersection of informatics, biology, and business.
6)Future. Ubiquitous computing (Rhodin), future of computing (Hillis). And the past: Navajo code talkers (Jay Hawthorne).
Finally. What is the meaning of intellectual property in a networked economy.
Welcome, We will be thinking and doing. We are more than 140 people from all over and many disciplines.
END