Instructor: Prof. Johan L. Bollen Office hours: Tuesdays, 2-3.30PM INFO East Rm. 304

1. Instructor: • Prof. Johan L. Bollen • Office hours: • Tuesdays, 2-3.30PM • INFO East Rm. 304 • Class meets: • Wednesday, 4-7PM • I107 (Informatics West) • Resources: • http://informatics.indiana.edu/jbollen/I501 • Oncourse.iu.edu

2. Overview of 1996-2009 timeframe: 1993-1994: Autonomous robots, VUB AI Lab - Luc Steels 1995-1999: Global brain, cybernetics, VUB - Francis Heylighen 1999-2001: Active recommender systems, LANL - Luis Rocha/Rick Luce 2001-2005: Digital libraries/usage data mining, ODU/LANL 2006-present: MESUR - Scientific program to track scientific activity, LANL/Herbert Van de Sompel Global Brain SFX recommender LOLA Funded by Andrew W. Mellon Preliminaries

3. And you?Tell me about your- background- interests- what do you expect from this course?

4. Overview • The course deals with the foundations of Informatics as an interdisciplinary field. It deals with concepts such as Information, Technology, Knowledge, Modeling, as well as their impact on science and society. The course will also attempt to define and understand what computational thinking can bring to science and society. In particular, we will focus on the National Science Foundation's definition of Computational Thinking as "a set of bold multidisciplinary activities that,[...] promise radical, paradigm-changing research findings. [...] Applied in challenging science and engineering research and education contexts, computational thinking promises a profound impact on the Nation’s ability to generate and apply new knowledge • Aims • The course is designed to present and discuss the history, methodology and impact of informatics; students are introduced to various approaches to informatics via interaction with faculty working on diverse problems, as well as the appropriate literature. Finally, students are expected to develop a understanding of what constitutes research in the field, via a familiarization with relevant funding opportunities.

5. Syllabus Overview • How did we get here? • From cybernetics to informatics • The logical mechanisms of nature and society • The nature of information • From semiotics to Shannon • Information and Technology • The cyborg species? • Technology as Problem Solving • Next-generation computer science? • Various flavors of informatics • Computing Models of the World • Next-generation science? • New computation paradigms • The Limits of Computation • Research in a nascent field • Computational thinking, what is it?

6. Evaluation • Participation: 20%. • Based upon attendance and participation. • Assignments: 30% • 2 assignments during the semester. • Research grant: 50% • Pre-proposal, as if to submit it to the NSF Program: Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI). This research pre-proposal should be developed in consultation with an appropriate faculty member, and should focus on a Computational Thinking approach to a research question. • (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08604/nsf08604.htm)

7. Course materials • Lecture notes and slides • See course web page and blog • Resources tab OnCourse • This week • McCulloch, W. and W. Pitts [1943], "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity". Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5:115-133. • Coutinho, A. [2003]. "On doing science: a speech by Professor Antonio Coutinho". Economia, 4(1): 7-18, jan./jun. 2003. • Heims, S.G. [1991]. The Cybernetics Group. MIT Press. Chapters: 1,2, 11, and 12. • Schwartz, M.A. [2008]. "The importance of stupidity in scientific research". Journal of Cell Science, 121: 1771.

8. Rules, rules, rules • Attendance • We expect that students will approach the course as they should a professional job – attend every class. • Academic Integrity • As with other aspects of professionalism in this course, you are expected to abide by the proper standards of professional ethics and personal conduct. This includes the usual standards on acknowledgment of joint work and other aspects of the Indiana University Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct. Cases of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Office of Student Ethics, a branch of the Office of the Dean of Students.

9. Incomplete grade • An incomplete (`I`) final grade will be given only by prior arrangement in exceptional circumstances conforming to university and departmental policy which requires, among other things, that the student must have completed the bulk of the work required for the course with a passing grade, and that the remaining work can be made up within 30 days after the end of the semester.

10. Grading

11. How did we get here?

12. Informatics: a possible parsing “Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems.” “the sciences concerned with gathering, manipulating, storing, retrieving, and classifying recorded information” “the study of information processing; computer science.” “Computer Science in Europe” ;-) Health- HCID Security Geo- Data Mining Bio- Data & Search Social Informatics Complex Systems • towards problem solving • beyond computing for computing’s sake • into the natural and social • synthesis of information technology Music- Chem- By Erik Stolterman/Luis Rocha

13. Post-war science • Significant advances in: • Engineering • Communication and Information theory • Computing • Cognitive science/AI • Logistics of large social systems • Inter-disciplinary, synthetic science • Emergence of cybernetics and systems science • Synthetic approach • Engineering-inspired: science of the artificial • Supremacy of mechanism • Postwar culture of problem solving • Interdisciplinary teams • Cross-disciplinary methodology • All can be axiomatized and computed • Mculloch & Pitts’ work was major influence William Ross Ashby (psychiatrist), Gregory Bateson (anthropologist), Julian Bigelow (electro technician), Heinz von Foerster (biophysicist),Lawrence K. Frank (social scientist), Ralph W. Gerard (neurophysiologist), Molly Harrower (psychologist), Lawrence Kubie (psychatrist), Paul Lazarsfeld (sociologist), Kurt Lewin (psychologist), Warren McCulloch (chair-psychatrist), Margaret Mead (anthropologist), John von Neumann (mathematician), Walter Pitts (mathematician), Arturo Rosenblueth (physiologist), Leonard J. Savage (mathematician),Norbert Wiener (mathematician), Max Delbrück (geneticist and biophysicist), Erik Erikson (psychologist), Claude Shannon (information theorist) Seated (L-R): Walther Nernst, Marcel Brillouin, Ernest Solvay, Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Warburg, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Wilhelm Wien, Marie Curie, and Henri Poincaré. Standing (L-R): Robert Goldschmidt, Max Planck, Heinrich Rubens, Arnold Sommerfeld, Frederick Lindemann, Maurice de Broglie, Martin Knudsen, Friedrich Hasenöhrl, Georges Hostelet, EdouardHerzen, James Hopwood Jeans, Ernest Rutherford, Heike KamerlinghOnnes, Albert Einstein, and Paul Langevin. • Solvay Conferences (1911-2008) • Macy Conferences (1943-1953)

14. Some examples • Engineering • Radar-guided anti-aircraft/missiles • Servo-control mechanisms • Blurring of biology/machine boundary • Science of the natural vs. science of the artificial • Computing • Digital computers: Eckard & Mauchly, Neumann • Science of computation/encryption: Turing, Neumann • Tantalizing possibility of substrate-independent intelligence • Cognitive science • Neural networks, neuroscience • Psychology: behaviorism, theories of learning • Social Sciences • Game theory • Computational approaches to large-scale social problems, sociology

15. Cybernetics • Created new fields • analytical in methodology • synthetic • interdisciplinary • concepts useful in constituent fields AI OR CS

16. Next lecture • McCulloch, W. and W. Pitts [1943], "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity". Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5:115-133. • Coutinho, A. [2003]. "On doing science: a speech by Professor Antonio Coutinho". Economia, 4(1): 7-18, jan./jun. 2003. • Heims, S.G. [1991]. The Cybernetics Group. MIT Press. Chapters: 1,2, 11, and 12. • Schwartz, M.A. [2008]. "The importance of stupidity in scientific research". Journal of Cell Science, 121: 1771.