Join Amazon Prime and get unlimited Free One-Day Delivery. Already a member? Sign in.

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
More Buying Choices
19 used & new from £11.73
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems)
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems) (Paperback)

by M Resnick (Author) "A flock of birds sweeps across the sky ..." (more)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
RRP: £16.95
Price: £14.49 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £2.46 (15%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Tuesday, July 14? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
13 new from £11.73 6 used from £11.73
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover 6 used & new from £26.72

Frequently Bought Together

Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems) + Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software + Emergence: From Chaos to Order
Price For All Three: £28.47

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software

by Steven Johnson
3.3 out of 5 stars (16)  £6.99
Emergence: From Chaos to Order

Emergence: From Chaos to Order

by John H. Holland
2.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £6.99
The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems and Adaptation (Bradford Book)

The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems and Adaptation (Bradford Book)

by GW Flake
4.0 out of 5 stars (2)  £30.35
Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (Penguin Press Science)

Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (Penguin Press Science)

by Steven Strogatz
4.2 out of 5 stars (8)  £6.99
Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton Studies in Complexity)

Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton Studies in Complexity)

by John H. Miller
£18.00
› Explore similar items

Product details

Product Description

Review
"Mitchel Resnick's book is one of the very few in the field of computing with an interdisciplinary discourse that can reach beyond the technical community to philsophers, psychologists, and historians and sociologists of science." --Sherry Turkle, Professor, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Product Description
Does every group have a leader? Does every pattern have a central cause? Most people tend to think so. Increasingly, decentralized models are being chosen for the organizations and technologies they construct in the world, and for the theories they construct about the world. But even as ideas about decentralization spread throughout the culture, there is a deep-seated resistance to them. This text examines how and why this is so and describes innovative computational tools and activities that can help people (even young children) develop new ways of thinking about decentralization, with examples in many different domains. This wide-ranging exploration into the non-intuitive world of decentralized systems and self-organizing phenomena brings together ideas from computer science, education, systems theory, and artificial life, with the aim of making the notion of self-organization more accessible. Using a new massively parallel programming language called StarLogo, Mitchel Resnick shows how the actions and interactions of thousands of artificial "creatures" can be controlled on the computer screen. For example, a user might write simple programs to describe the actions of thousands of artificial ants, then observe the complex patterns in the ant colony that arise from all of the interactions. Resnick describes how high school students have used StarLogo to create new types of computer simulations, examines how their thinking changed in the process, and concludes by proposing heuristics for thinking about decentralized systems.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
A flock of birds sweeps across the sky. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
Check the boxes next to the tags you consider relevant or enter your own tags in the field below
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
See all 5 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems)
51% buy the item featured on this page:
Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems) 4.2 out of 5 stars (5)
£14.49
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software
17% buy
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software 3.3 out of 5 stars (16)
£6.99
A New Kind of Science
11% buy
A New Kind of Science 2.9 out of 5 stars (12)
£34.00
Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (Penguin Press Science)
11% buy
Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (Penguin Press Science) 4.2 out of 5 stars (8)
£6.99
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction, 1 Nov 2001
By A Customer
This book is not solely about StarLogo, but it does feature quite prominently. Its main function is to introduce modelling decentralised systems, and it does this using the StarLogo language.

The book is highly readable and covers the basics very well, and delves into some of the more advanced topics as well. A student learning to model systems could do a lot worse than get this book as the starting point. Combine it with 'Adventures in Modeling' and you've pretty much got yourself a good course is modelling, as well as all the software you need.

One minor caveat is that the examples in the book do need some minor modification to work with the latest version of StarLogo, but this is explained on the website. On the whole though, I think it is an excellent book.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A book on Star Logo, 3 Aug 1999
By A Customer
This book is mainly about Star Logo, an extension to the Logo language, you know, this program with a turtle strolling around, for children to get acquainted with computers and plane geometry.

Star Logo has much more features, allowing easy yet sounding powerful implementation of decentralized system, which one famous instance is cellular automaton, and some specific others in the book are ant colonies behavior, forest fires or traffic jams, with the cell of cellular automata being replaced by the notion of an "agent" (less known it seems to the public).

If you need a book for Star Logo, this is the one to get, but if you are looking for artificial life and self organization alone, don't get it.

Excellent bibliography.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Sows the seeds of ideas to explore, 27 Jan 2000
By A Customer
This book is *not* mainly about StarLogo.

The author firstly gives an account of the current trend toward decentralised models in different contexts. I found these first couple chapters enjoyable but wasn't completely convinced by the arguments and examples presented. I felt that the author had stretched reality a little to fit nicely to his ideas. There were very interesting and fresh observations even in those chapters, though.

Don't be put off by the apparently technical nature - this is a very accessible book that explains ideas in a clear and understandable manner. Remarkably, you can get a lot out of the book even if you don't look at (or understand) the StarLogo program listings.

Resnick provides plenty of external references so that you can go and find out more about topics you find interesting. I am, however, a little disappointed that he did not provide a list of general introductory references. People who stumble across this book may want to find out more but be discouraged by the difficulty of some of the referenced text.

I don't believe that there is a particular intended target audience but I'd recommend this as reading for all. Parents, children, and educators especially should find the main ideas (implied and explicit) fascinating. They should be able to use it as a start of exploration into different ways of looking and thinking about the world.

The book is by no means a comprehensive text on decentralised (complex) systems or on emergent behaviour but is a good way to get excited about those ideas!

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenges your centralized way of thinking
The book starts off slow but quickly builds on the principles discussed. I found many chapters fascinating. Read more
Published on 27 May 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is an excellent intro to complex systems
The study of complex systems is a little too trendy at the moment to be conducive to good science. Many of the popular books on the topic are full of entertaining speculation... Read more
Published on 14 Dec 1998

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

 Beta (What's this?)
This product's forum (0 discussions)
  Discussion Replies Latest Post
  No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
  [Cancel]


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Feedback

Adventures in Modeling...

Adventures in Modeling...

Have you ever wondered how birds flock or forest fires spread? For... Read more
£25.60

›Find similar items

 

Up to 75% off Shoes

Shoe Clearance - 75% off Shoes
Save up to 75% on shoes for the whole family.

›Shop clearance shoes

  

Up to 50% off Dental Care

Braun Oral-B Professional Care 6000 Rechargeable Toothbrush - Pack of 2
Put a sparkle in your smile with up to 50% off selected Oral-B and Philips rechargeable toothbrushes.

›Up to 50% off power toothbrushes

  

Treat Someone

Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificates--available in any amount from £5 to £500 With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is).

›Learn more about Gift Certificates

  
Ad

Where's My Stuff?

Delivery and Returns

Need Help?

Your Recent History

  (What's this?)
You have no recently viewed items or searches.

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.

Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session.
Continue Shopping: Top Sellers
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
4.5 out of 5 stars (74)£3.86
 Breaking Dawn (Twilight Saga)
Breaking Dawn (Twilight Saga) by Stephenie Meyer
4.1 out of 5 stars (464)£6.49
 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
4.1 out of 5 stars (165)£3.99
 The Host
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
4.2 out of 5 stars (81)£3.86

amazon.co.uk Amazon Home
International Sites:  United States  |  Germany  |  France  |  Japan  |  Canada  |  China
Business Programs: Sell on Amazon  |  Fulfilment by Amazon  |  Join Associates  |  Join Advantage
Customer Service  |  Help  |  View Basket  |  Your Account
About Amazon.co.uk  |  Careers at Amazon
Conditions of Use & Sale |  Privacy Notice  © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates