Re: OPENING SESSION

Dear Ted and colleagues,

Thanks for the Opening, and for the sprinkled drops of humor. You are
raising a number of enticing items. Let me pick just a couple of them:

It is our final session, and it would make the year's effort more
>worthwhile if we could produce some conclusions. I propose that
>instead of seeking concurrence on what we all agree on, let us
>instead crisply identify the open controversies by focusing on
>apparent fundamental differences. It is my experience that this is at
>least as valuable as the consensus results and has the benefit of
>better structuring research decisions.

Personally I find that the discussion on 'info' differences between living
and nonliving matter has been quite profound. Also, the relationships
between information and entropy (either thermodynamic or Shannonian) have
resisted clarification, although some new ideas to ponder have been
presented. Very intriguingly, the theme of molecular recognition, followed
by abduction, has somehow produced a collective convergence --the hunch
that going both backwards and forwards a substantial part of the info
puzzle may get an improved ordering. Then, the interdisciplinary problem
(or its absence within our present system of sciences) has not received
much attention; but the socioinfo realm (including the exchanges on power
laws and a little bit of economics) has shown some promise of finding an
interesting development from FIS perspectives. In spite of some individual
attempts, we have not meaningfully connected with the contemporary problems
(sustainable development, world crisis) but who knows...

>Do we need new abstractions? Are these discovered or engineered and
>which among the FIS presentations so far seem promising to you?
>(Don't vote for yourself!)
>
>Do we need to redefine the problem for the next FIS adventure?

My opinion is that we are 'in the dark' yet. All the formal tools presented
so far have weak and strong aspects... Rather than relying on a single
approach, I am inclined to follow a syncretistic vision. For instance, the
overall qualitative conceptualization from Karl, the physical from Juan and
Andrei, the entropy from Shu-Kun, the communication in living cells from
Jerry and Cristophe, the self-referential from Terry, the symbolic from
John H., the social info 'mechanics' from Ted and Wolfgang, the causality
and optimality from John C.... but obviously this 'soccer team' is quite
arbitrary.

Following with the arbitrariness, the most strategic field for fis futures
is in my opinion related to the axis: entropy-molecular
recognition-abduction-adaptability theory (Michael Conrad). Without
forgetting the drops of humor --could the very mechanism of laughter
illuminate the most cursory dynamics of the 'mental engine'? That is what I
seriously think.

To conclude: this conference has advanced several steps in the redefinition
of our problem, and opened exciting new perspectives, but an elegant and
mature synthesis of the info 'Encyclopedia' does not look close yet.

all the best

Pedro

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Pedro C. Mariju�n
Fundaci�n CIRCE
CPS, Univ. Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
TEL. (34) 976 762036-761863, FAX (34) 976 732078
email: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
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Received on Wed Dec 11 12:11:25 2002