Abstract
The MECS 2016 Annual Conference »Agent Cultures and Zombielands« explores the epistemological impact and the mediatechnological conditions of Agent-based Modeling and Simulation (ABM). Today, ABM ranges from infrastructure models for production sequences, administrative processes, warehousing, transport and traffic, and communication networks, to the simulation of social systems like animal collectives, pedestrian motion, urban studies, crowd management, evacuation studies, epidemiology, and financial markets, up to integrative Global Scale Agent Models. Agent-based Modeling and Simulation share a paradigm of distributed control among multiple autonomous and lifelike agents. The rise of ABM implies a conception and specification of (artificial) sociality.
The MECS 2016 Annual Conference «Agent Cultures and Zombielands» will examine this particular dimension of sociality in ABM from a transdisciplinary perspective, conveying scholars from computer science, social science, media studies, and experts from various fields of application. General questions touch on the verisimilitude of ›lifelike‹ behavior. They ask about the conceptual ingredients of the sociality in social simulations. And they inquire how social simulations, vice versa, might have been impregnated sociological and political notions of ›the social‹.
| Thursday June 23, 2016 | |
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| 14.30 | Welcome Reception |
| 15.00 | Opening Remarks Introduction |
| 15.30 | Robert Axtell Opening Keynote |
| 16.45 | Coffee Break |
| 17.00 | Eric Winsberg (University of Southern Florida) A Tale of Two Methods |
| 18.00 | Get Together |
| 19.00 | Movie Screening SCALA Programmkino, Apothekenstr. 17, 21335 Lüneburg |
| 21.00 | Dinner
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| Saturday June 25, 2016 | |
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| 10.00 | Sven Opitz (University of Marburg) Simulating the World: The Digital Enactment of Pandemics as a Mode of Global Self-Observation |
| 11.00 | Coffee Break |
| 11.30 | Christian Borch (Copenhagen Business School) Agent-Based Modeling and Algorithmic Finance: What ABM might teach Economic Sociology about Inter-Algorithmic Sociality |
| 12.30 | Hanno Pahl (Ludwig-Maximulian-University München) Agent-Based Modeling in Macroeconomics: Opportunities and Obstacles. Some Evidence from the Field. |
| 13.30 | Sebastian Vehlken, Ricky Wichum Closing Remarks |
| Friday June 24, 2016 | |
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| 10.00 | Rainer Hegselmann (Bayreuth University) Thomas Schelling and James M. Sakoda: How to Become an Unknown Pioneer? |
| 11.00 | Coffee Break |
| 11.30 | Franck Varenne (University of Rouen/CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) On Methodological Discretism |
| 12.30 | Lunch Break |
| 14.00 | Klaus G. Troitzsch (University of Koblenz-Landau) Can Agent-based Simulation Models Replicate Organized Crime? |
| 15.00 | Alexander Galloway (New York University) The Computational Decision |
| 16.00 | Coffee Break |
| 16.30 | Petra Gehring (TU Darmstadt) Drawn from Life: Power of a Paradigm |
| 17.30 | Get Together |
| 18.30 | Keynote Sara Y. Del Valle (Los Alamos Laboratory) Agent-based Modeling Approaches for Simulating Infectious Diseases |
| 20.00 | Drinks & Dinner Schröders Biergarten, Adress: Vor dem Roten Tore 72, 21335 Lüneburg |
Conference venue
Freiraum Lüneburg
Salzstraße 1
21335 Lüneburg
Tel.: +49 (0) 4131 8201 750
E-Mail: info@freiraum-lueneburg.de
Registration
The symposium is open to the public and free of charge, but registration is required. Please register by sending an e-mail to mecs@leuphana.de.