This document discusses using fractally-organized connectionist networks to address challenges facing modern organizations. It provides examples of simple LED lamps and a telemonitoring service that demonstrate emergent complexity from simple parts. The key proposal is a "fractal connectionism" approach combining connectionism, which uses networks of simple units, with a fractal organizational structure involving nested communities of services at different levels. This recipe could help rethink organizations by distributing functionality across relative simple yet interconnected units. The document concludes more work is needed to fully specify activation states and unit outputs in such fractal connectionist networks.

1. Fractally-organized Connectionist
Networks
Vincenzo
De Florio
MOSAIC:
UniAntwerp
iMinds

2. 2
Times, they are a-changin’…
Less resources
Higher
peaks, harder
shocks
Higher
number
of users…
ICT
Energy product-
ion & distribution
Businesses
Transport of
goods & people
HEALTHCARE
ORGANIZATIONAL
CRISIS
Understanding & rethinking
our organizations is crucial!

3. 3
With the meter in the red zone…
• …organizations that
appeared to work fine
reveal their limitations!
–lose too much
–use up too many resources
–do not scale well
–intolerable to changes
–fail to address new aspects
→Traditional approaches are
reaching structural limits.

4. A little world with big problems
• Scale has changed
– Data are big; users are many; requests and
needs to be answered are too many
• Complexity has arisen and is spreading
through the layers of our interconnected
infrastructures
• Interdependence increases fragility
• Our design assumptions systematically
introduce yielding points.

5. Challenges
• How do we address pervasive societal
problems such as healthcare & crisis
management?
• How do we rethink our organizations?
Which tools, which software could help?
1.Examples & ingredients
2.A recipe
3.Discussion
4.Conclusions
This ppt

6. Example: A LED Lamp
• A collective system
made of a large
number of simple units
• Simple-behavioured
"Parts" producing
a simple-behavioured
"Whole"
• A simple organization!
– No need to "connect"
– Connection: managed "physically", through
the additive properties of physical light.

7. Simple Parts, Simple Whole...
Complex Emergence!
• Complex emerging properties!
– Low power consumption
– Higher efficiency
– Graceful degradation: "Fuzzy" failure
semantics!
→ Small is (sometimes!) beautiful!

8. Example: Telemonitoring Service
in Project "Little Sister"
• Low-cost non-intrusive
telemonitoring solution
• Specially designed low-res sensors
• Battery powered
• All resources wrapped as
manageable web services
• Deployed into a smart
house.

9. Simple Parts, Complex "Glue":
Complex Emergence!
• A middleware component manages the WS
• Middleware turns on / off the nodes
– in function of the context / situation / required
operation / "mode"
– Energy vs. Safety trade-offs: Sensors are used
only when needed to guarantee safety
→ Prolonging the sensors' "lives"
• Connectionism: small and connected is
(sometimes!) even more beautiful.

10. Connectionism
• Our first "ingredient"!
• aka Parallel and distributed processing;
aka ANN
• Networks of tiny units
• Complexity is in the network rather than in
the units
• Units: feature-like entities.

11. Connectionism
• State of activation: unit is participating / it
is in sleep-mode
• Output of the unit: percentage of
involvement
• Patterns of activity: how involvement
"spreads" through the network
• Activation rule: next configuration, given
the current one + context change.

12. Connectionism
• Modifying patterns of connectivity as a
function of experience
• Done in PhD work (outside the scope of
LS)
– Tracking the performance of individual units
– Gradual penalization / rewarding
– Enrollment = f( "score" )
→ A learning step!

13. Connectionism
• Biggest limitations:
– absolute simplicity
– flat organization.

14. Example: Little Sister's
Fractal Organization
• Idea: moving from absolute simplicity to
relative simplicity
• Units are simple w.r.t. their "level"
• Hierarchical organization of "fractals"
• Each fractal, a WS group of units led by a
coordinator/representative: the MW.

15. LS Middleware
• Based on a fork of Apache MUSE
– “a Java-based implementation of the WS-
ResourceFramework (WSRF), WS-
BaseNotification (WSN), and WS-
DistributedManagement (WSDM) specifications”
• On top of Axis2
• Partially implements the WSDM-MOWS
specifications (Web Services Distributed
Management: Management of Web
Services).

16. Layer0
(Raw
compo-
nents)
Layer1
(e.g.,Smart
House)
Layer2(e.g,
Smart
Building)
Layer3
(e.g.,SmartHospital)
..Upper
layers...

17. LS' fractal social organization
• Multi-tier distributed architecture
• Services structured within hierarchical
federation reflecting structure of
deployment environment
– rooms; flats; building; external application
• Each level, a "fractal"
– Same rules, different units
– Service-oriented community.

18. Bind
Local analysis
and coordination
Intra-level
processing
Member
Service and
feature registry
Service
description
Publish Publish
Capabilities
Policies
Availability
Locations…
Roles &
situations
Member Member
LS sensors
Units Member
Member
MemberMember
SoC's
…
Inter-level
processing
Service-oriented Community
Exception → Event propagation

19. FSO: Fractal organization of SoC's
• "Principle of increasing inclusiveness, so
that entities at one level are composed of
parts at lower levels and are themselves
nested within more extensive entities"
• Nature's way: nested compositional
hierarchies.

20. FSO: Fractal organization of SoC's
• Simplified version in LS
– Predefined number of levels
– Predefined operations
– No semantic description and matching
– No definition of new inter-level SoC's.

21. Fractal connectionism
• Our "recipe"!
• Connectionism with
– relative simplicity
– increasing inclusiveness.

22. Fractal connectionism
• Networks of fractals
• Complexity is in the network and in the
units
• Units: entities simple w.r.t. the current
level.

23. Fractal connectionism
• State of activation: as in connectionism
– unit is participating / it is in sleep-mode
• Output of the unit: percentage of
involvement
– FSO: all or nothing
• Patterns of activity: how involvement
"spreads" through the network
– FSO: enrollment and exceptions.

24. Fractal connectionism
• Modifying patterns of connectivity as a
function of experience
• Tracking the performance of individual
units and compounds
• Permanentification: from transient to
permanent response
→ A learning step!

25. Fractal Social Orgs
• Mathematical model:
http://goo.gl/gvVGH5
• Geometrical and audio
representations
–Modularity
–Self-similarity
–Fractal dimension!
http://goo.gl/vO8RKj

26. 001122222222

27. 012345678

28. 001123344

29. Conservation of modularity

30. • Complex FSOs
• With NetLogo
Simulations

31. Simulations

32. Preliminary results

33. Conclusions
• Two "Gestalts"
– Connectionism, fractal organization
• F → C
– relative simplicity; increasing inclusiveness
• C → F
– Many gaps are revealed!
– More complex states of activation and outputs
of the unit: nature and percentage of
involvement.

34. Conclusions
• Small is beautiful
→Small and connected is more beautiful
→Relatively small and fractally organized is
even more so!

35. Thank you for your attention!
Questions?

36. vincenzo.deflorio@gmail.com /
uantwerpen.be
Blog: eraclios.blogspot.be
LinkedIn group "Computational Antifragility"
ANTIFRAGILE workshop
twitter://@EnzoDeFlorio