How computers simulate cities and how they are also being embedded in cities, changing our behavior and the way in which cities evolve.

At every stage in the history of computers and communications, it is safe to say we have been unable to predict what happens next. When computers first appeared nearly seventy-five years ago, primitive computer models were used to help understand and plan cities, but as computers became faster, smaller, more powerful, and ever more ubiquitous, cities themselves began to embrace them. As a result, the smart city emerged. In The Computable City, Michael Batty investigates the circularity of this peculiar evolution: how computers and communications changed the very nature of our city models, which, in turn, are used to simulate systems composed of those same computers.

Batty first charts the origins of computers and examines how our computational urban models have developed and how they have been enriched by computer graphics. He then explores the sequence of digital revolutions and how they are converging, focusing on continual changes in new technologies, as well as the twenty-first-century surge in social media, platform economies, and the planning of the smart city. He concludes by revisiting the digital transformation as it continues to confound us, with the understanding that the city, now a high-frequency twenty-four-hour version of itself, changes our understanding of what is possible.

More at: mitpress.mit.edu

An ode to systems engineers―whose invisible work undergirds our life―and an exploration of the wicked problems they tackle.

Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects―often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy―are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon.

In linked chapters focusing on key facets of systems engineering―efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance, and resilience―engineer Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future. He examines best-known tragedies and lesser-known tales, from the efficient design of battleships to a volcano eruption that curtailed global commerce, and how maintenance of our sanitation systems constitutes tikkun olam, or repair of our world. Braided throughout is the uplifting tale of Edwin Link, an unsung hero who revolutionized aviation with his flight trainer. In Link’s story, Madhavan uncovers a model mindset to engage with wickedness.

An homage to society’s innovators and maintainers, Wicked Problems offers a refreshing vision for readers of all backgrounds to build a better future and demonstrates how engineering is a cultural choice―one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.

More at: www.amazon.com

There are many images of science and the activities of scientists. Some would imply that science will eventually reach the limits of knowledge while others create an expectation of endless horizons. Some people would believe that science has or will provide the answers to key open questions that lie ahead, while others experience fear regarding its development. In this book, we will look at all these aspects, going from particles, via atoms, cells, stars, galaxies, our place in the universe, to explore what makes us, human beings, really unique in nature: our ability to imagine and shape the future by making use of the scientific method. The book is an EPS action designed to address the social dimension of science and the grand challenges in physics that will bring radical change to developed societies, raise standards of living at the global scale, and provide basic understanding of nature on the horizon 2050.

Read the full book at: iopscience.iop.org

This book provides a unified, theory-driven introduction to key mathematical and agent-based models of social dynamics and cultural evolution, teaching readers how to build their own models, analyze them, and integrate them with empirical research programs. It covers a variety of modeling topics, each exemplified by one or more archetypal models, and helps readers to develop strong theoretical foundations for understanding social behavior. Modeling Social Behavior equips social, behavioral, and cognitive scientists with an essential tool kit for thinking about and studying complex social systems using mathematical and computational models.

More at: press.princeton.edu

Philosophy’s value and power are greatly diminished when it operates within a too closely confined professional space. Extreme Philosophy: Bold Ideas and a Spirit of Progress serves as an antidote to the increasing narrowness of the field. It offers readers–including students and general readers–twenty internationally acclaimed philosophers who highlight and defend odd, extreme, or ‘mad’ ideas. The resulting conjectures are often provocative and bold, but always clear and accessible.
Ideas discussed in the book, include:
propaganda need not be irrational
science need not be rational
extremism need not be bad
tax evasion need not be immoral
anarchy need not be uninviting
democracy need not remain as it generally is
humans might have immaterial souls
human minds might have all-but-unlimited powers
knowing might be nothing beyond being correct
space and time might not be ‘out there’ in reality
value might be the foundational part of reality
value might differ in an infinitely repeating reality
reality is One
reality is vague
In brief, the volume pursues adventures in philosophy. This spirit of philosophical risk-taking and openness to new, ‘large’ ideas were vital to philosophy’s ancient origins, and they may also be fertile ground today for philosophical progress.

More at: www.taylorfrancis.com