Complexes

“There is nothing completely new because everything is related to something else. But there is always novelty in anything, since contexts change constantly” “Life is a game complex enough not to be able to always win” “ Life is not meant to be perfect ” “The problem of being unaware is that you are unaware of being unaware” “ Tendencies tend to change ” You can find many more at http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/jlagunez/aforismos.html (since 1997)

Just finished the first version of a paper (still needs refining, so any feedback is more than welcome) : Gershenson, C. (2006). Towards Self-organizing Bureaucracies . (ECCO working paper 2006-03) Abstract: This paper proposes self-organization as a method to improve the efficiency and adaptability of bureaucracies and similar social systems. Bureaucracies are described as networks of agents, where the main design principle is to reduce local "friction" to increase local and global "satisfaction". Following this principle, solutions are proposed for improving communication within bureaucracies, sensing public satisfaction, dynamic modification of hierarchies, and contextualization of procedures. Each of these reduces friction between agents (internal or external), increasing the efficiency of bureaucracies. Download pdf

Mixel asked me to make a list of the plugins I use for Firefox to surf the web, so here it goes... First, I'll repeat some advantages it has over other web browsers: It's multiplatform, which is good for a person like me using MacOS, Linux, and Windogs machines... It's open source, meaning not only free, but that enthusiasts can check the code, and easily add their own improvements. Features include: tabbed browsing, search engine box (where you can add searches from hundreds of search tools. I use, among others, Google Scholar, Amazon.com, Yandex.ru, Webster's Dictionary, and Wikipedia... so I can make searches in no time in these sites), and themes (I use iFox , which integrates it nicely with MacOS look and feel) Now, all these are similar to other nice browsers, such as Safari, Galeon, Konqueror, or Netscape. (Notice how IE is not in the list of "nice browsers...." it doesn't even have tabbed browsing!!!). But, what takes Firefox a level above all b...

OK, here's an idea... I sometimes work in different computers (Mac, Linux, and PC), and synching documents is boring... I was thinking that it would be great if there was a "Google Office", where I could edit documents online, save them as a part of my gmail space, and download/print/export to pdf if I want to... The Open Document Format has already several filters (e.g. to import/export to MSWord), so if this was used, and the Gmail/Page Creator editors are already something, all that is needed is the filter from the editor to ODF, tweak the filesystems bit, and presto! Gooffice to go... There are already similar softwares, but it would be great if it was integrated to the Google family...

Just stumbed on a great community site where you can find lots of original texts for free in several languages... It would be great if such a site would grow enough so that authors holding copyrights of their works would be motivated to upload them there... anyway if you want a book you buy it, but if it is online, the impact is much wider... especially for those who wouldn't be able to buy the book anyway, for whatever reasosn... Read more at wikisource.org/wiki/Mai...