Dirk Helbing Livres

What principles hold our society together? This question is complex, especially in light of the 21st-century challenges, such as financial crises and globalization. Understanding how society functions and how to manage our future sustainably is urgent. This book offers initial insights into this ambitious goal, using simple models of social interactions to reveal surprising "macro-level" outcomes from individual "micro-level" behaviors. These interactions can lead to the formation of social conventions and cooperation, or, conversely, their sudden collapse, resulting in disasters like crowd tragedies or environmental crises. It critiques classical modeling approaches, such as representative agent models, which fail to capture the self-organization of social systems. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of randomness, spatial or network interdependencies, and nonlinear feedback effects in understanding social dynamics. The evolutionary modeling approach presented here effectively explains counterintuitive phenomena arising from these features. The chapters cover modeling strategies for socio-economic systems, experimental issues, and agent-based modeling, with applications in pedestrian dynamics, opinion formation, cooperation, conflict, and systemic risks in society and economics. Selected parts have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

The book explores the application of statistical physics and complex systems theory to model and understand social phenomena. The first edition was priced prohibitively, prompting the release of a new edition to make the content more accessible. Since its initial publication, the methods discussed have gained traction across various fields. Key concepts include a statistical theory of binary social interactions, a mathematical formulation of social field theory foundational to social force models, and a microscopic basis for evolutionary game theory grounded in the 'proportional imitation rule.' The work also presents a stochastic approach to interactions in evolutionary game theory and a model for the self-organization of behavioral conventions in coordination games. This new edition aims to preserve the original character while offering it at a more affordable price, reflecting the growing relevance and application of these methods in contemporary research and practice.

The essays and lectures collected in this book center around knowledge transfer from the complex-system sciences to applications in business, industry and society, as viewed from a broad perspective. The contributions aim to raise awareness across the spectrum to meet the increasing need to integrate lessons from complexity research into everyday planning, decision making, logistics or optimization procedures and forecasting. The writing has been largely kept non-technical.

"The rapidly progressing digital revolution is now touching the foundations of the governance of societal structures. Humans are on the verge of evolving from consumers to prosumers, and old, entrenched theories - in particular sociological and economic ones - are falling prey to these rapid developments. The original assumptions on which they are based are being questioned. Each year we produce as much data as in the entire human history - can we possibly create a global crystal ball to predict our future and to optimally govern our world? Do we need wide-scale surveillance to understand nd manage the increasingly complex systems we are constructing, or would bottom-up approaches such as self-regulating systems be a better solution to creating a more innovative, more successful, more resilient, and ultimately happier society? Working at the interface of complexity theory, quantitative sociology and Big Data-driven risk and knowledge management, the author advocates the establishment of new participatory systems in our digital society to enhance coordination, reduce conflict and, above all, reduce the "tragedies of the commons," resulting from the methods now used in political, economic and management decision-making."--Back cover

"Digital transformation" sounds harmless, given that the explosion in data volumes, processing power and Artificial Intelligence has driven humanity and the entire world to a point of no return. We will surely see a new civilization, but we are at a crossroads. The future needs to be re-invented, decisions must be taken. After the automation of factories and the creation of self-driving cars, the automation of society is on its way. But there are two kinds of automation: a centralized top-down control of the world and a distributed control approach, supporting local self-organization. Using the power of today’s information systems, governments and big tech companies seem to engage in the first approach. Might they even build a „digital Crystal Ball“ that knows almost everything, including your personality, and a super-intelligent "digital God“ to control what we do? We are much closer to such „science fiction scenarios“ than you probably think. In this much expanded second edition of "The Automation of Society is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution" (2015), the author discusses lessons learned on digital democracy, aspects of transhumanism and far-reaching thoughts about life in the digital age and what it may mean to be human in the future.

The explosion in data volumes, processing power, and Artificial Intelligence, known as the "digital revolution", has driven our world to a dangerous point. One thing is increasingly clear: We are at a crossroads. We need to make decisions. We must re-invent our future. [This full colour book includes 32 figures and visualisations.] After the automation of factories and the creation of self-driving cars, the automation of society is next. But there are two kinds of automation: a centralized top-down control of the world, and a distributed control approach supporting local self-organization. Using the power of today's information systems, governments and companies like Google seem to engage in the first approach. Will they even try to build a "digital God" who knows everything and controls what we do? In fact, governments would spend billions to predict the future of our world and control its path. Given that, every year, we produce as much data as in the entire history of humankind, can we now create a better world? The abundance of data certainly makes it possible to establish an entirely new paradigm for running our societies. Could we even build a data-driven "crystal ball" to predict the future and, given that knowledge implies power, also something like a "magic wand" to optimally rule the world? Will the digital revolution empower a "wise king" or "benevolent dictator", maybe by means of Artificial Intelligence? In fact, we are much closer to this than you might think. But do we really need large-scale surveillance to understand and manage the increasingly complex systems we have created? Or are we running into a totalitarian nightmare?

This new collection of essays follows in the footsteps of the successful volume Thinking Ahead - Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory Market Society, published at a time when our societies were on a path to technological totalitarianism, as exemplified by mass surveillance reported by Edward Snowden and others. Meanwhile the threats have diversified and tech companies have gathered enough data to create detailed profiles about almost everyone living in the modern world - profiles that can predict our behavior better than our friends, families, or even partners. This is not only used to manipulate peoples’ opinions and voting behaviors, but more generally to influence consumer behavior at all levels. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are rapidly heading towards a cybernetic society, in which algorithms and social bots aim to control both the societal dynamics and individual behaviors.

„Are there common phenomena and laws in the dynamic behavior of granular materials, traffic, and socio-economic systems?“ The answers given at the international workshop "Traffic and Granular Flow '99" are presented in this volume. From a physical standpoint, all these systems can be treated as (self)-driven many-particle systems with strong fluctuations, showing multistability, phase transitions, non-linear waves, etc. The great interest in these systems is due to several unexpected new discoveries and their practical relevance for solving some fundamental problems of today's societies. This includes intelligent measures for traffic flow optimization and methods from „econophysics“ for stabilizing (stock) markets.

KlappentextVerkehrsdynamik präsentiert die neuesten Entwicklungen im Bereich Modellierung und Simulation des Fußgänger- und Autobahnverkehrs, basierend auf einer Synthese physikalischer und sozialwissenschaftlicher Konzepte. Im Zentrum des Interesses steht der Vergleich der Modelle mit empirischen Daten sowie das Verständnis von „Staus aus dem Nichts“ und anderen faszinierenden kollektiven Bewegungsmustern, die durch Selbstorganisation entstehen. Verkehrsdynamik diskutiert neuartige Methoden, wie Selbstorganisationsphänomene zur Optimierung des Verkehrsflusses ausgenutzt werden können und wendet sich an Wissenschaftler, Städte- und Verkehrsplaner. Die behandelte Thematik genießt wegen ihrer aktuellen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Relevanz in jüngster Vergangenheit eine außerordentlich große Aufmerksamkeit in den Medien.