Comments for Business Ecosystems

Comment on Simulating the Brain ? Let’s use Statistical Mechanics ! by Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 08:10:31 +0000

Very nice Antonio. To add a “curious” bit, apparently evolution is rewarding lower entropy states (higher efficiency) by making us feel a sense of pleasure. For scientists the fact that we find our loved one “beautiful” is just a consequence that our brain has developed recognition circuits that require less energy in recognising our loved one face, hence we find that face “beautiful”. Love, according to scientists is a state of low entropy…. Not over-romantinc but still….

Comment on Power Law: from neurons to edge networks by roberto

roberto — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 06:15:17 +0000

I wonder if the energy budget has some importance too. The highly connected nodes (our switches or main hubs) have a high energy budget whilst low connected nodes (sensors, terminals) have a low energy budget. Interestingly, in the small world, low connected nodes are the ones that really shape the network whilst highly connected ones are basically redundant (up to a certain thresholds). Hence, I wonder whether it is the billions of low budget energy nodes (that all together, however exceeds the energy budget of the highly connected nodes) that creates, as it happens in the brain, the meta-structure of meaning (intelligence).
If such a parallel holds it may be an indication that networks based on billions of low budget and low connections rank are really different and of higher semantic levels than the classical ones since they create a meta-structure and a new meaning that goes beyond connectivity.

Comment on Another step towards bio-chip symbioses by Antonio Manzalini

Antonio Manzalini — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:11:15 +0000

Thanks for this nice post, Roberto.
I wish adding my two cents.
Turing (when defining his machine) explicitly wanted to abstract and model what a “clerk” in a bank is doing when computing with numbers.
Interestingly, Turing himself, some years later wrote another paper where he proposed a computing device in the form of a network of very simple units, able to learn, and then to solve an optimization problem. Unfortunately, this paper remained unpublished (but it was recently re-evaluated: for details, have a look at “Alan Turing. Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker”, Springer-Verlag, Berlin).
Indeed for operating these kind of chips we need to go beyond the pure Turing machine, maybe resuming from his later paper. I guess that we need also to go beyond the notion and theory of information introduced by Claude Shannon: as we said, in a complex network, information is not just communicated, but it is also processed in changing contexts and so morphed dynamically along the way, at various stages, at various levels.
It would be a really exiting looking at a theory of “autonomous systems” incorporating these aspects! A lot of exploitations in several fields would follow…

Comment on Towards “soft” networks? by Business Ecosystems » Blog Archive » Which way to be “Smart” ?

Business Ecosystems » Blog Archive » Which way to be “Smart” ? — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:03:09 +0000

[...] already elaborated about Software Defined Networks in a previous post. In simple words, in a SDN control and data planes are decoupled, so that control intelligence and [...]

Comment on An Interface between light and matter for Quantum Networks by Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:40:50 +0000

The whole field of quantum communications is evolving. Most recently first the Japanese and then a European team managed to “teleport” information via quantum entanglement. Per se it is not something that can be applied in practice but it is a further step in “understanding” the viability of entanglement to code information.
This may come handy once classical cryptographic method based on factorization will no longer be usable. Entanglement may be the answer to sustain a world where economical transactions are on line. That will also require end to end optical networks and specific network architectures. This is something that may find application in the next decade but next decade optical networks are being deployed today and though this decade. Better make them right now.

Comment on What future for services? by Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:16:47 +0000

In 1985 Europe won the world by pro ducting the GSM specification… now Europe has lost the battle in wireless; hence it should learn to fight on new battle field.

Comment on What future for services? by Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:14:47 +0000

Operators are starting to deploy Deep Packet inspection to maximize the user experience (they claim…). Is this really the way to go.
From an institution point of view (Franco – EU) there is a feeling and need to remain neutral….
There is a need to regulate the decoupling of services and network resources. This would avoid the creation of proprietary clouds and probably may circumvent the need for deep packet inspections since there can be a resource access negotiation.

Comment on What future for services? by Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:09:17 +0000

Operators have been good in making money out of pipes, but they have not been good in creating services decoupled from the network. Can this scenario change in the future? According to Roberto M it is a matter of life or … disappearance.
Operators are still bounded by their networks and hence they cannot aiming at the global marketplace but to the fragment of it they reach with their network. Operators, as any players, are very good in their core market, better than Google. The problem is that the core market of Operators is declining….

Comment on What future for services? by Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:04:22 +0000

Regulation has looked at infrastructure and a few involved players what happens if we shift the attention to a multiplicity of players ending up to individual people?
Big initiates launched in research funding have to take the regulatory framework into account….
The FIPPP has this embedded.
Clearly if telephone numbers are owned by an Operator the implication is quite different from saying that the number is owned by the person using it…

Comment on What future for services? by Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:57:48 +0000

There has been a sequence of dominance, the Internet lends itself to the “winner takes it all” because of the low transaction cost and the fleeting stickiness of users coupled with the value of the network (Metcalfe law)