> What is agent-based programming?
Vera -
These were new to me when I got to LCHC this fall, too. Jerry
Balzano, next door, has been working with them for years and Mike recently
organized a weekly lab meeting around the one targeted to the youngest
kids. It is called "Cocoa" and used to be named "KidSim". Two others Jerry
has shown me are AgentSheets and and StarLogo. The last is for high-school
to professional use. I think Jerry might be reading xmca these days, so he
can correct any misconceptions in the following.
The languages begin somewhat like a spreadsheet, with cells that
can be programmed to do things. But these cells act merely as an
environment, because, like the environment, they don't move. Added to this
are special cells that can also take formulas, hold multiple values, etc.
but these cells can move -- thus, they are much better for modeling
agents, whether these agents be species members or, in the case of my
work, even cultural practices. The little system gets exciting when it is
allowed to cycle. On each cycle an agent moves, may or may not reduce the
value of a resource, may or may not increase its own resource value, and
may or may not have its value adjusted based on what other agents (similar
or different from itself) are around it.
People gulp at thinking about cultural practices as agents, but
they do require time (a resource), time devoted to one practice
detracts from the time available to another (competition), and change in
frequency of use (grow).
The reason I got so interested in these games is that after more
than 1,000 hours of working with a single family of (dynamic) ecological
equations, I still have a lousy intuition about what will happen as a
result of each cycle (and it's not jus that I am dense, because many
others have reported the same phenomenon when dealing with dynamic
systems:-). But I am convinced that sociocultural practices grow this way.
When I saw StarLogo's vivid graphical display and programming capability
so easy a kid could learn it, I got very excited. Maybe I have a hard time
learning these things, because I have so overlearned linear thinking. So,
maybe kids who learn Cocoa and StarLogo can grow up with an advantage I
didn't have. Or maybe most humans will be no better at this sort of
thinking than they are at doing cube roots. But in that case, knowing how
to use a modeling language will be of great benefit to them. In either
case, growing the use of agent-based languages results in a cultural plus.
David