Zann Gill Calendar - Google, Leonardo, NASA Ames, Stanford talks




	...SEPTEMBER 2009
		What Daedalus told Darwin Tracing a thought path from Leonardo da Vinci’s little-known Codex Trivulzianus, through Adam Smith’s neglected Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was overshadowed by his Wealth of Nations, highlights cultural biases that may explain why we emphasized a half interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, making the Tragedy of the Commons an inevitable outcome of evolutionary dynamics. Recent findings in cell biology raise questions about pure Darwinism (random variation and environmental selection) as the exclusive driver of evolution’s ingenious designs. Mythical inventor/ architect Daedalus tells the great scientist Charles Darwin that Intelligent Design has diverted us from the full meaning of “design” — its role in life’s past and future evolution toward an eco-sustainable planet. Program for the evening.

© Zann Gill 2008 – 2010 Zann Gill short bio Image Credits. September — Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Trivulzianus, Fol30r, © Comune di Milano May — View of Los Angeles April — focusthenation.org March — NASA, SF Bay February — IBM. wordle © Jonathan Feinberg 2008. January — Jeffrey Ventrella December — NASA November — MEJ Newman October — NASA August — NASA July — Jordan Pollack & Hod Lipson, "Golem"	Monday, September 14, 2009 Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER), a monthly series of lectures and presentations organized on behalf of Leonardo/ISAST, hosted by the University of San Francisco
	...MAY 2009

		May 29, 2009 — webcast Ecology & Learning Zann Gill is interviewed by Jay Cross about developing collaborative learning models, translatable into methods that can address eco-sustainability challenges as evolvable, collaborative learning systems. Synopsis in eLearn Magazine, online journal of the ACM; webcast at Learning Irregulars

	...APRIL 2009
		Opening Remarks Judy Miner, Foothill College President and Mayor Jean Mordo, Los Altos Hills The Emerging Green Economy • William Blessing, Ratcliff Architects • Robert Cormia, Foothill College Faculty • Charles Allen, Executive Director of Facilities • Steve Schmidt & Jay Shideler, Los Altos Energy Initiatives • Margaret Abe-Koga, Mayor of Mountain View • Curtis Williams, Planning Director, City of Palo Alto • Peg Champion, GreenTown Los Altos Keynote: Zann Gill FOOTHILL COLLEGE AT THE LEADING EDGE learning, innovation, and sustainable communities TOWN HALL FORUM Closing Remarks Webcast here. Review here. Foothill College Program listing here.

	Foothill College, Campus Center Saturday, April 18, 2009 12345 El Monte Road Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 9 AM — 12:30 PM Objective. Launch the Foothill College initiative to be a model sustainable community college campus, building coalition between the campus and its communities around a clean energy future.
	...MARCH 2009
		EVOLVING COLLABORATIVE INTELLIGENCE engaged citizens & smart systems for sustainable cities Nature manifests directed innovation, with a series of “process design” principles that human-computer systems could emulate. Zann Gill will describe how the evolution of life harnesses innovation networks, directed processes that converge toward improved adaptation that could not be predicted in advance as a goal. These principles are applicable to smart systems that support cross-disciplinary, collaborative problem-solving as we face our greatest challenge, eco-sustainability. Collective intelligence, which taps the consensus “wisdom of crowds,” harnesses algorithms to transform diverse input into a better-than-average consensual output. In contrast, collaborative intelligence taps and retains the diversity of individuals, manifesting principles of evolutionary design, such as collaborative autonomy, to co-evolve by improving through time, innovating and adapting to continually changing ecosystems. This talk will describe how Nature’s dynamic design process principles apply to practical problems faced by enterprise systems (from companies to social networks to cities and nations) to evolve more intelligent capacity for emergent pattern recognition, decision-making, and to converge gradually toward sustainable operations.

	SAP Future Salon Friday, March 20, 2009 SAP Labs, 3410 Hillview Ave Palo Alto, CA 94304 6-7 pm networking, light refreshments sponsored by SAP; 7 – 9 pm presentation followed by discussion. Blog here. Webcast here. Objective. To seed discussion about the role SAP Future Salon plays in enabling our collaborative intelligence to evolve smart meta-systems for sustainable futures. Applications to explore include sustainable business practices, rapid responder systems for emergencies, e-governance, and planning eco-cities.

	TERMAN 507 TERMAN 507 ...FEBRUARY 2009
		WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD DARWIN social nets, semantic webs & evolving systems Researchers have analyzed how social networks operate, from small organizations to nations and networks of people connected by similar values and objectives. But insufficient attention has been paid to harnessing social networks for cross-disciplinary, collaborative problem-solving. 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of his publication of Origin of Species. The theory of evolution is seen by many as the greatest theoretical breakthrough of all time. Zann Gill will introduce findings that call for a more complete interpretation of Darwin’s theory (Stephen Jay Gould thought “Darwinism” misrepresented Darwin) and argue that this more complete interpretation of Darwin’s theory would drive sustainable development and offer a model for seeding and evolving “innovation networks” to develop smart systems for eco-sustainability at the intersection of ICT and green tech.

	Monday, February 23, 2009, 11 AM Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI ), National University of Ireland IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan Galway, IRELAND Objective. To explore how DERI's semantic web and e-learning R & D support Dublin's e-city initiative and Ireland's international leadership, harnessing enterprise, university, and government collaboration.
	...JANUARY 2009
		Modeling Smart Sustainable Systems artificial life, decision support, & the environment From ALife to "terraforming Mars," our speculative thought experiments enhance awareness of Earth's intricate web of life. Trying to synthesize life or to simulate life's behaviors are both ways we speculate about evolution and the future. Updating Buckminster Fuller's vision of World Game for eco-sustainability and world peace will promote constructive speculation and harness models developed by the artificial life community, moving beyond deterministic to emergent systems able to cope with uncertainty.

	Friday, January 23, 2008, 8 pm. BIOTA LIVE podcast Call-in number: 646-200-0640 Host: Tom Barbalet & Zann Gill	Also on Simulations Network, Podcast Alley and Podcast Pickle.
	...DECEMBER 2008
		Nine ECO-logical design principles new media and sustainable innovation Drawing from her forthcoming book, What Daedalus told Darwin, Zann Gill will describe how design thinking can harness new media to promote cross-disciplinary collaboration, citing innovation network principles and dynamics found in the origin and evolution of life with lessons for eco-sustainability. Though we're poised to experience the impact of what Garrett Hardin evocatively predicted in 1968 would escalate into a Tragedy of the Commons, where competition for scarce resources and "survival of the fittest" could threaten the delicate balance of Earth's ecosystems, we're also poised to harness web 2.0 digital media, learning systems, social networks and ubiquitous computing to reverse the downward slump — to achieve technological innovation, social change, revitalized cities and a greener economy. This talk will describe how nine principles of ECO-logical design, illustrated in the origin and evolution of life, can "raise our collaborative intelligence."

	Thursday, December 4th, 6 – 7 PM Media X — Stanford University Peter Wallenberg Learning Theater Building 160, Room 124 Stanford web event listing here next now no host dinner after the talk, Jing Jing, 443 Emerson St. in Palo Alto. Talk online at the Media X website. Objective. To explore the increasingly significant role Media X is playing at the intersection of new media and complex, cross-disciplinary challenges.

	......NOVEMBER 2008
		designing innovation networks modeled on life’s origins and evolution Highly innovative organizations face the constant challenge of processing a flood of good ideas, both generated by employees and submitted from outside. In the wake of Google’s Tenth Birthday Competition, this talk describes how innovation networks apply principles found in life’s origins and evolution to “innovation processing.” Debates about how novelty emerged in the origin of life and its evolution toward complexity demand revising assumptions that we’ve taken for granted. Steven Jay Gould said that "Darwinism" misrepresents Darwin. A more complete interpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution could inspire new problem-solving methods with practical applications, e.g. from multi-agent systems able to learn and improve their performance to cross-disciplinary decision support systems designed to address environmental sustainability challenges.
	Thursday, November 20, 2008, Google Zann Gill talk and discussion webcast on Youtube Google employees + some invited from the NASA brainstorm Objective. To discuss nine principles of innovation networks and the problem-solving method they support.
	......OCTOBER 2008
	Tuesday, October 7, 2008. 4 pm NASA Ames Research Center Building 3, Patio Room. Directions 4 PM........Zann Gill's talk & discussion 5 - 5:30......Networking Break 5:30 - 7:30 Brainstorm with Provocateurs + Audience PROVOCATEURS Joe Betts-Lacroix, Evocateur/ entrepreneur: Founder/ CTO of OQO; Harvard: earth, MIT: oceans, Caltech: proteins, IBM Research: usability Rich Boyle, NASA Ames, Director BioVis (Bio-Visualization, Imaging and Simulation Technology Center) Geoff Briggs, NASA Ames (ret.), Founder/ Director of the Center for Mars Exploration Bruce Damer, CEO, DigitalSpace Corporation, Founder, Contact Consortium & Biota.org (project EVOgrid) Boris Debic, Google Software Engineer & Chief Historian, Mars Society project director Deborah Grove, Principal, Grove Associates Patty Jones, NASA Ames, Division Chief (acting), Human Systems Integration Division Chris McKay NASA Ames physicist (from Earth to Mars and beyond) Steve Omohundro, President, Self-Aware Systems Mark Shirley NASA Ames Software Lead, LCROSS Lunar Mission Jonathan Trent NASA Ames biologist (from nanotechnology to astrobiology) Osher Yadgar, Computer Scientist, SRI Artificial Intelligence Center (multi-agent systems/ emergent behavior/ sensor networks) Objective. To stir the "primordial big ideas alphabet soup" and watch how letters cluster to spell out one or more concepts worth pursuing.	If Microbes begat Mind. . . . origins of life & emergence of intelligence Zann Gill will present the hypothesis of her book (title above): traits ascribed to mind, such as pattern recognition, may have counterparts in early life. The origin and synthesis of life are windows on controversies over evolution and intelligence. Rather than argue for “one right answer” to the question of how life originated, she'll describe how design principles apply, not only to the origin of life, and to the design of hypotheses about it, but also to the debates and question it inspires. She'll examine not only how research on the origin and evolution of life is a case study of the creative process in science, but also how this research can inform the synthetic disciplines: AI, ALife, robotics, and designing collaborative multi-agent systems. QUESTIONS from provocateurs & the audience, e.g. 1. Is the origin of life a proof in principle that Darwinian evolution does not fully explain how life advanced toward complexity? 2. self-aware systems. What mechanisms enable the acceleration of evolution, such as the Baldwin effect, a new deliberative Baldwin effect, group evolution, and self-improving systems? What are the implications of these mechanisms for evolving, self-aware technologies and for technology innovation? 3. Alife can be invisible to extant immune systems. Slime-9 fears: it could reproduce unchecked and run rampant. Personalized medicine dreams: it could enter living systems unmolested to perform useful tasks. Will smart biotechnologists become Intelligent Designers in our interest? Or is there another approach to “planetary protection” that we could harness if we were clever enough? 4. Sensor networks as intelligent, multi-agent systems. What is their potential to support decision-making toward environmental sustainability? 5. networked computer grids. Could they be used as a lens to understand how life began on Earth, or elsewhere in the universe? 6. Long "Turing" Bet 2029. What types of bio-inspired simulations will pass "the Turing test" to be deemed by biologists worthy of study as models revealing insights about life? What role will they perform? 7. Innovation networks for sustainability. What has NASA learned from space travel that can contribute to sustainable communities on Earth? 8. from concept to implementation. What hurdles must we overcome to achieve more effective collaboratory initiatives? Filmed by Furious Ink Studios Filmmakers: Kurt Stumbaugh & Igor Stalew
	......AUGUST 2008
	Friday, August 22, 2008, 8 pm. BIOTA LIVE podcast Call-in number: 646-200-0640 Host: Tom Barbalet & Zann Gill with Bruce Damer, Travis Savo, Ed Seufert	The BIG SPLIT in the Intelligent Design vs evolutionary emergence debates is pervasive — echoed by ALife designers who play God versus those who explore how evolution operates, by games driven by rigid goals versus exploratory, innovative gaming. ALife has come of age to bring its methods to significant challenges, such as: 1. How can we define life, from “the protocell in a bathtub” to "Dawkins’ puddle"? 2. What does it mean to be life-like? 3. How can ALife address green tech and sustainability challenges? 4. How can Alife succeed where AI failed to design evolvable learning systems? 5. If multi-agent, collaborative complex systems are modeled as ALife ecosystems, can we design a collaboratory that adapts through human-computer interaction, exemplifying co-evolution?
	......JULY 2008
		WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD DARWIN artificial life's unique problem-solving methods Daedalus, the mythical artificer, was first responsible for the genetic experiment that produced the Minotaur. He was then commissioned to design a labyrinth to cage the beast. Finally, he ended up imprisoned in that labyrinth and designed wings to escape. This parable about how we trap ourselves in our own designs is the jumping off point for a talk about whether artificial life is a threat, a tool for problem-solving, or both. Zann Gill will present ideas from her forthcoming book, What Daedalus told Darwin, describing her early work at NASA toward an “Is it alive?” competition and results from the panel she co-chaired at ALife X, which generated a range of concepts for alife competitions. This talk will be followed by Scott Schafer's presentation of VatLife: An Interoperability Framework and a brainstorming session on future artificial life challenges.
	Tuesday, July 29, 2008 SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center Menlo Park 6 – 6:45....Networking, Cafe Borrone 7 PM ........Zann Gill's Talk. Enter at Building-E Visitor Lobby

	back to top \| home ..........