Gordon's work on ant colonies provides a tractable and easily understandable way in to both systems thinking and understanding complexity. By using ants and ant colonies as the object of analysis, Gordon asks questions that all systems analysts would. From exploring how actors sense and respond to their environment, to inquiring as to how the system self-regulates behaviour such as foraging for food, this work is grounded firmly in science, while being clear about what answers we still have not discovered.
My key critique of this work is that the last chapter on modelling feels undone; I would really have liked to see systems diagrams of the phenomena visualised.
Reviews and Comments
technology. cybernetics. systems. science fiction. languages. machine learning. speech recognition.
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KathyReid@bookwyrm.social reviewed Ant encounters by Deborah Gordon
Review of 'Ant encounters' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
KathyReid@bookwyrm.social rated Hunger: 5 stars
Hunger (2016, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)
Hunger by Roxane Gay
“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. …
Light, easyweight introduction to the topic of overwhelm and procrastination
3 stars
A light, easy introduction to the psychological concepts underpinning overwhelm, including alignment with personal values, boundary-setting, procrastination and perfection. There's nothing particularly new or revelatory here; but this is a great starting point for those wanting to dip their toe into the topic.
Review of 'How to Write a Lot' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This easy-to-read guide is aimed at helping graduate students create habits of writing that will serve them both as students and as early-career researchers. The over-arching message of the book is that you can write anywhere, at anytime - and that you much challenge the "specious barriers" you place in your own way. The later chapters of the book focus on the writing pipeline, such as preparing articles for submission to journals, books, and grant applications.
Well worth a couple of hours for any new PhD candidate.
KathyReid@bookwyrm.social rated Unsong: 3 stars
Unsong by Scott Alexander
Aaron Smith-Teller works in a kabbalistic sweatshop in Silicon Valley, where he and hundreds of other minimum-wage workers try to …
Review of 'The Reflective Practice Guide' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is an accessible, well-structured guide both for those new to reflective practice, and those guiding or instructing others in the discipline of reflective practice.
It provides solid, but not overwhelming, theoretical foundations for different approaches to reflective practice, and pragmatic, easily-implementable strategies for structuring reflecting writing, responding to emotions in reflective ways, and understanding the role reflecting practice plays in life-long learning and professional development.
I only wish this book had been recommended to much earlier.
KathyReid@bookwyrm.social rated Donna Haraway's a Cyborg Manifesto: 3 stars
KathyReid@bookwyrm.social reviewed AARNet by Glenda Korporaal
AARNet (2009, AARNet)
Review of 'AARNet' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Korporaal's well-researched booked chronicles an incredibly important time in Australia's technical genealogy, exploring the relationships, political influences, strokes of luck and ill fortune - that have all shaped AARNet today.
More than a decade after the period covered in the book, her weaving of multiple threads of people, personalities and partnerships resonates.
KathyReid@bookwyrm.social reviewed AARNet by Glenda Korporaal
AARNet (2009, AARNet)
Review of 'AARNet' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Korporaal's well-researched booked chronicles an incredibly important time in Australia's technical genealogy, exploring the relationships, political influences, strokes of luck and ill fortune - that have all shaped AARNet today.
More than a decade after the period covered in the book, her weaving of multiple threads of people, personalities and partnerships resonates.
Review of 'Made by Humans: The AI Condition' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Ellen Broad’s multi-faceted exploration of the many inter-twined aspects of artificial intelligence embarks and concludes at the same salient juncture; emerging technologies are conceived, shaped, used, governed and iterated by humans. Just as humans are inherently neither good nor bad, the systems we construct echo our moral plurality, our unconscious bias, and, frequently, our unwillingness to be critically interrogated.
That this is Broad’s first book – given its well-researched examples, coherent structure and intellectual incisiveness – is surprising. Its clarion call – for greater care, more rigourous thinking and a more holistic approach to the almost-infantile adoption of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous decision-making – is not.
Structured in three distinct parts – Humans as Data, Humans as Designers and Making Humans Accountable, the book covers much territory. From systemic and cultural biases in how data used by machine learning is selected and captured, to the errors that are …
Ellen Broad’s multi-faceted exploration of the many inter-twined aspects of artificial intelligence embarks and concludes at the same salient juncture; emerging technologies are conceived, shaped, used, governed and iterated by humans. Just as humans are inherently neither good nor bad, the systems we construct echo our moral plurality, our unconscious bias, and, frequently, our unwillingness to be critically interrogated.
That this is Broad’s first book – given its well-researched examples, coherent structure and intellectual incisiveness – is surprising. Its clarion call – for greater care, more rigourous thinking and a more holistic approach to the almost-infantile adoption of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous decision-making – is not.
Structured in three distinct parts – Humans as Data, Humans as Designers and Making Humans Accountable, the book covers much territory. From systemic and cultural biases in how data used by machine learning is selected and captured, to the errors that are introduced to data sets by humans, to decisions made about system tradeoffs, what privacy means in different contexts, how open a system is to inspection and intelligibility, how diverse that system is, to who is accountable for the impacts of a system, real life examples are interwoven with provocative and often confronting questions.
Broad does not set out – at least in this tome – to answer these questions – rather, she lays a foundation for examining each of these questions in more depth. Personally I’d like to see a follow-up to this that covers attempts to standardise practices in machine learning and artificial intelligence – the frameworks and benchmarks – often competing – that have been proposed – alongside efforts at industry adoption and (likely) the barriers that are faced.
