Links

Internet

Boids- Craig Reynolds - A great internet jumping-off point for exploring emergent behavior, cellular automata, and multi-agent systems. Craig Reynolds was the originator of Boids, a famous flocking simulator. His Boids model has been the basis for special effects in movies, such as in 1992 Batman Returns, where bat swarms and penguin flocks were simulated. The Boids internet site has many links to other interesting sites, books, and papers.

SerenDip - An interactive playground for learning and sharing knowledge about the subjects of Brain and Behavior, Complex Systems, Genes and Behavior, Science and Culture, and Science Education. Each of these areas contains interactive exhibits, articles, links to other resources, and a forum area for comments and discussion.

CASOS - Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon, is a research group focused on developing a better understanding of the fundamental principles of organizing, coordinating, managing and destabilizing systems of intelligent adaptive agents (human and artificial).

CalResCo - The Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept is a site dedicated to promoting the wider aspects of the Complex System sciences by education, synthesis and by the integration of the theories into the mainstream viewpoints of arts, philosophy and science.

MultiAgent Systems - Source for news, software, and resources for agent-based modeling and simulation.

NetLogo - Excellent multi-agent simulation software in LOGO - it's free. NetLogo was created and is maintained by the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. NetLogo is a spin-off from StarLogo - one of the first multi-agent software programs.

Swarm - An advanced software system for multi-agent simulation of complex systems. The Swarm site is hosted by the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan.

Repast - An "industrial strength" multi-agent open-source toolkit in Java and .NET frameworks.

Books

Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod is a book which explores the conditions under which fundamentally selfish agents will cooperate. To perform his study, political science professor Robert Axelrod invented a famous computer game, called the iterated prisoner's dilemma, in which cooperation is pitted against defection as a means for survival.

Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds by Mitchel Resnick - explores the world of decentralized systems and self- organizing phenomena from the viewpoint of an educator. Mitchel Resnick describes the StarLogo computer language that he developed to help students simulate and understand multi-agent systems.

Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick helped popularized the science of "Chaos" for understanding complex, highly non-linear and "unpredictable" systems such as weather and economics.