A Common Language for a Networked Society

The Call for Papers for the Symposium Vernetzung als soziales und technisches Paradigma stipulates the optimistic view that self-organized, „networked“ systems are to become a preferred choice over centrally organized, hierarchical systems. This assumption seems justified by some developments originating from contemporary computing technologies, particularly by the success of meta-heuristics for asymptotically solving NP-complete search problems. Genetic algorithms or ant colony systems (De Jong 2006; Dorigo and Stutzle 2004; Kennedy et al. 2001; Bonabeau et al. 1999; Lin and Lee 1996) are suitable for solving optimization problems that cannot be solved exactly by a deterministic algorithm. But communicating simple agents can find a very good approximate solution. The power of agents cooperating in some network seems also justified by Milgram’s letter forwarding experiment (Travers and Milgram 1969). A recent study by Jon Kleinberg analysing link-data from the Internet provides further evidence in this direction (2008).