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Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems) | 
 enlarge | Author: Mitchel Resnick
Publisher: The MIT Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy New: $15.74
You Save: $6.26 (28%)
New (13) Used (11) from $11.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 159805
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 181
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.4
ISBN: 0262680939
Dewey Decimal Number: 004
EAN: 9780262680936
ASIN: 0262680939
Publication Date: January 10, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New/As issued no jacket; New book. Trade paperback with no marks or creases. Appears unread. Beautiful book. Email when shipped and free tracking information and delivery confirmation on domestic orders. No tracking or delivery confirmation available on international orders.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
How does a bird flock keep its movements so graceful and synchronized? Most people assume that the bird in front leads and the others follow. In fact, bird flocks don't have leaders: they are organized without an organizer, coordinated without a coordinator. And a surprising number of other systems, from termite colonies to traffic jams to economic systems, work the same decentralized way. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams describes innovative new computational tools that can qhelp people (even young children) explore the workings of such systems?and help them move beyond the centralized mindset.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 great presentation of the concepts of decentralization August 2, 2008
This book presents the concepts of decentralization using the StarLogo programming language. Unfortunately, the code examples are for a early version of StarLogo and will not work correctly with current versions of this programming language. I still think it is a great book for learning about the paradigm shift from centralized thinking to decentralized thinking. The author seems to think that much of nature can be understood as decentralized systems rather than as top down centralized systems. While I am sure this approach does not work for everything, I think it is useful to be knowledgeable of this way of thinking. I highly recommend this book for gaining the a fore mentioned perspective.
 Is a good start but needs more... June 13, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Book needs some more content, it gives a good first level intro but does not develop it into more interesting/advanced things.
50% of the book is a 'sales' pitch for StarLogo.
If you have experience with writing code for simulations this book is a bit light technically.
Still has some interesting ideas in it.
The arcane made accessible March 28, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
On the surface, the book seems focused on computers and even video games. This makes the activities appealing for middle and high school students. However, the ideas in this book are actually relevant to two entirely different fields: 1) genetics, and 2) artificial intelligence. Both these fields have at their centers the concept of complexity arising out of simplicity. Students who work their way though the activites in this book will find that Dr. Resnick offers a window into a deep mathematical world that has applications far beyond computers and games.
Great Starting Point in Agent based Modelling October 17, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Mitchel Resnick shares a lovely sense of wonder, discovery and fascination in this slim, easily read volume about agent based modelling. Using micro-worlds (termites, ants and other modelling metaphors) Resnick shows us how collective behaviours are more than a simple sum of the parts - and through his experiments using StarLogo programming he shows the nature of emergent behaviours that come through decentralised thinking.
His reading list is a great starting point for anyone fascinated by Complexity and Agent Based Modelling, and so too is his elegant list of guiding heuristics that he has learned through toying with various ants, termites, forest fires and traffic jams.
- Positive feedback (in models) often plays a vital role.
- Randomness can help create order. Random isn't always chaotic.
- A Flock is not a big bird. The behaviour of groups should not be confused with the behaviour of individuals.
- A traffic jam is not just a collection of cars. Emergent objects have an ever-changing composition.
- The hills are alive. Don't just focus on the individual objects - look also at their environment.
This volume helped our research team design approach agent-based modelling, and put us in touch with other avenues of decentralised thinking: for example Network Theory. Best of all, Resnick helped us lighten-up. This book (and its subject matter) has profound ideas, but never loses a delicious sense of awe. Recommended.
interesting, but describes an old version of the software September 28, 2003
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a book describing the research of a team at MIT using a version of the educational language "Logo". Running in a simple graphical environment which supports multiple parallel operation of code in the same shared space. Write a few lines of code for an "ant", then let 1000 of them loose. The current version of this "StarLogo" system is written in Java, and available as a free download for anyone to play with.The use of Logo is both a strength and a weakness of the approach. The strength is that the code is concise and easy to understand. The weakness is that there is only one source of the software, and anyone wishing to try it is limited to the available download. This would not be such a limitation if the book described the same version, but unfortunately things have moved on a lot since the book was written, and few (if any) of the examples will work without alteration. As well as the development of the StarLogo system, the book covers experiments in emergent behaviour. Typical sections include how parameter and environment changes can affect the growth and development of simulated ant colonies, and a theoretical basis for those "phantom traffic jams" we have all experienced. This book is certainly interesting if you are interested in developing parallel software simulations, or if you are interested in marginal computer languages, but don't expect the code to work without effort.
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