In a blog post about CEP being considered a supporting act for BPM and other technologies, Raimer von Ammon of CITT (a spinoff from University of Regensburg, Germany) commented about the EU proposal for a “U-CEP” (Ubiquitous CEP) research programme. In that comment Rainer mentioned the connection between CEP (an IT paradigm around events) and Biology (covering event-driven neural and evolutionary systems – Epigenetics and Brain Research) which form part of the U-CEP EU research programme proposal. Rainer has kindly elaborated some more on this topic, which IMHO is worthy of a separate post on this blog … and I note has parallels to one of James Odell’s posts on the “inside of an agent”…
Two or three recently emerging disciplines yield to a similar paradigm in order to explain how the environment (actually the universe of global event clouds) and their processing by sensors (respectively receptors and the activation of effectors) drive our daily life, but also the whole evolutionary process of life on our earth since the Big Bang.
The discipline of the New Biology or Epigentics has detected – on the basis of the nanotechnology, microbiology and cell biology – within the last years that the life of cells is determined by its physical and energetic environment and not by their genes. Genes are only the molecular “blue print”, the design pattern, on which the structure or architecture of cells, tissue and organs is based. But the environment as a global cloud of signals, energies or so called events are at the end responsible for the way of life of a cell. In each single cell the mechanisms of life are triggered by the processing of the “events” of its environment and not by its genes.
Since “quantum physics” and the “Heisenberg uncertainty relation” we know today that such events are at last energy as eddies of quarks and photons, but we can define different types of events, also on the physical level. Around 3.5 billion years ago the first monads as bacilli and algae lived on the earth, 650 millions of years ago the multicellular organisms as trees and other plants were created as a more complex and more intelligent life, and since around only 100,000 years the today’s human is a united cell structure of 50 trillions of single cells where each cell is doing event processing on the base of its receptors of its cell membrane. So, a human being can allegedly process 120,000 events per second unconsciously (by the right side of the brain), but logically a human can only process around (I guess) 7 or a few information units at the same time (by the left side of the brain).
Against this background CEP is based on a very similar model. EPAs (event processing agents) are actually cells where event adaptors are the receptors of a cell membrane and the event processing logic based on an EPL (event processing language) are the effectors of a cell. EPNs (event processing networks) are actually a united multicellular structure and so on.
The Epigenetics explains how the environmental signals (events) control the activity of the genes. The primacy of the DNA is no longer valid, and the new found information flow is now called the “primacy of the environment”. Recent experiments of The Epigeneitcs have proved that our beliefs and thinking is energy in the sense of environmental signals. The Epigenetics found that all these kinds of environmental signals influence the regulating proteins which control the activity of the genes and that the global event cloud as environmental signals influences and changes the DNS (so called reverse transcriptase).
What is an individual?
According to the Epigenetics an individual is determined by the sum of its receptors in the cell membrane of all its 50 trillions of (specialized) cells. Each individual is unique because it is controlled or driven by the protein machines of its cells as a result of the received events (signals) of the global event cloud of the universe. The global event cloud does always exist and each event is an undestroyable energy which exists always and forever (see Unus Mundus and space-time continuum).
The Epigenetics explains an individual as an analogy of a broadcasting of television programs where the adjustment buttons are the receptors of the cell membranes which determine which program we receive in which manner. If we add or switch off receptors, we receive a different program or we see the same program differently. This can be understood as the incarnation of an individual. On the basis of such a model we can explain phenonemas like reincarnation or time travel as well.
Results of the recent Brain Research
On the basis of recent experiments of the Brain Research, researchers like Wolf Singer, Gerhard Roth et al. claim that a free will does not exist. They believe that their experiments have proven that the brain region which is responsible for a deliberate decision is only later activated when a signal or event is received while the protein machinery as the activity activator was already started “long” before. This cognition that there is no free will could be supported by the Epigenetics and the functionality of a cell membrane and its receptors and effectors/event adaptors and EPA’s as the basis of the whole protein machinery and as the motor of life.
“If you think you think you only think you think” versus “Cogito ergo sum” (Descartes) …”
For the U-CEP course/textbook I’m gathering some materials since some time which I’ll add to the U-CEP doc within the next days; here are some nice video lectures as a basis for U-CEP enhancements/projects, e.g. from Bruce Lipton, I like him as a great guy and great lecturer:
http://epigenetics.uni-saarland.de/en/home/ (German language only)
http://www.tonyb.freeyellow.com/id68.html
http://www.veoh.com/collection/AgriculturalNews/watch/v378752sbRFQa3F# (video)
some first ideas regarding Jim’s comment:
http://forum.complexevents.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=268
This post asserts that “According to the Epigenetics an individual is determined by the sum of its receptors.” However, I would respectfully like to modify the assertion. Both the receptors *and* the interactions among them must be considered as an individual. Instead, I would like to offer that an individual is a complex adaptive system and therefore — by definition — an individual is GREATER than the sum of the behaviour of its receptors and their interaction.
Jim – I concur – perhaps there was some implied idea that the receptors included processing, which does not really make sense.
Cheers
Just a minor correction regarding the introduction of Paul:
CITT and the Universities of Regensburg are different and independent things. Although CITT was a spin off, founded by 3 diploma students and me (thought as coach only) in Oct 2005, based on the idea “From student to entrepreneur”
Thanks Rainer – updated the post accordingly!
Just some “visions” (must be long-term, an horizon of around 15 years):
We can talk about how we could invent ICT-based projects and product ideas for the European Commission and its “Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship Initiative 2020 and Beyond”. It is possible to connect humans or Cyborgs and robots to new events or new event types and patterns as mentioned in the draft of the U-CEP textbook http://www.citt-online.com/downloads/Book-Ubiquitous%20Complex%20Event%20Processing.pdf. Ray Kurzweil recently reported a new invention that lets you implant miniaturized antennas for new event types in the skin. And we can send an Exocortex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocortex) such events or signals as complex event patterns to be processed suitably as long as the human brain has not learned how to react on them and we would have to map them to processes appropriate for humans, e.g. in the case of disaster management, panic situations of large crowds etc.and we would have to define appropriate reactions of the people; we could make simulations, etc., as how would the view to the world be changed in humans through new types of events or event patterns. The Blue Brain of Henry Markram’s team (EPF Lausanne) could be connected to U-CEP and could react on such event patterns and so on. And when the Blue Brain finally speaks and would have emotions, like Henry has promised for the next ten years …
Intelligence is actually the ability to predict, says Jeff Hawkins in his book “On Intelligence”. His idea of how our actually lazy Complex Events processing brain/cortex works so efficiently by a 6-layered multi-tier cortex whereby the invariant event patterns are stored on the lowest tier and are correlated with new events and patterns of the higher levels – this idea follows the very similar CEP-model of event abstracting, event hierarching, event enrichment, event aggregation and correlation etc. The next generation of Smartphones which already today processes simple events according to the in advance specified profile of the user and starts location-based services accordingly might be based on such a concept, by the help of Moore’s law or Ray Kurzweil’s Accelerating Returns and in the more distant future based on new and million times faster computing principles like Bio- or Quantum Computing and would work a bit as an Exocortex. It will more and more not be based on a single or centralized Exocortex but it will work as a distributed, multicellular or even “cosmic” Exocortex. This is actually an old vision: “… The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.
—Man-Computer Symbiosis, J.C.R. Licklider, March 1960
Some months ago, I commented a bit about this subject and where the new inventions will come from in Opher’s blog I like as one of my favorite blogs, something fun, because Opher trusts on Big Dogs and I’m more skeptical:-)
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7831813422886730737&postID=6058401564789552704
In connection with future Intelligent Cars / Next Generation Navigation Systems based on U-CEP, we could also develop various ideas, see comment 3 here:
http://www.complexevents.com/2010/08/10/driverless-cars-just-around-the-corner/#comment-30988
Such “use cases” of different domains will grow together in the sense of U-CEP in the near future; here are some recent ideas about projects we could do together; we have just started the discussion about appropriate consortia and members. Ideas and comments welcome (rainer.ammon@citt-online.com):
http://www.citt-online.com/downloads/Project%20ideas%20and%20funding%20ressources.doc
A lot of patents will come up around these interdisciplinary ideas and the hope of the European Commission – often told at its FP7-events – is that Europe should play a major role.