Artificial society

Artificial society is the specific agent based computational model for computer simulation in social analysis. It is mostly connected to the theme in complex system, emergence, Monte Carlo method, computational sociology, multi-agent system, and evolutionary programming. The concept itself is simple enough. Actually reaching this conceptual point took a while. Complex mathematical models have been, and are, common; deceivingly simple models only have their roots in the late forties, and took the advent of the microcomputer to really get up to speed.

The aim is to construct parallel simulations consisting of computational devices, referred to as agents, with given properties, in order to model the target phenomena. The subject is the process of emergence from the lower (micro) level of a social system to the higher (or macro) level.

The history of agent-based modeling can be traced back to Von Neumann machines, the concept of a machine capable of reproduction. The device he proposed would follow precisely detailed instructions to fashion a copy of itself. The concept was then extended by von Neumann's friend Stanislaw Ulam, also a mathematician, who suggested that the machine be built on paper, as a collection of cells on a grid. The idea intrigued von Neumann, who drew it up, thus creating the first of the devices later termed cellular automata.

A further advance was achieved by mathematician John Conway. He constructed the well-known game of life. Unlike von Neumann's machine, Conway's Game of Life operated according to tremendously simple rules in a virtual world in the form of a 2-dimensional checkerboard.

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