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
14.30Welcome Reception
15.00

Opening Remarks 
Claus Pias, Martin Warnke

Introduction
Sebastian Vehlken, Ricky Wichum

15.30Robert Axtell
Opening Keynote
16.45Coffee Break
17.00Eric Winsberg (University of Southern Florida)
A Tale of Two Methods
18.00Get Together
19.00

Movie Screening
Echtzeit (Hellmuth Costard & Jürgen Ebert, BRD 1983, 107 Min)
with an introduction by Florian Wüst (Berlin)
Admission is free.

SCALA Programmkino, Apothekenstr. 17, 21335 Lüneburg
www.scala-kino.net/extras/echtzeit

21.00

Dinner


  

Saturday June 25, 2016
10.00Sven Opitz (University of Marburg)
Simulating the World: The Digital Enactment of Pandemics as a Mode of Global Self-Observation
11.00

Coffee Break

11.30Christian Borch (Copenhagen Business School)
Agent-Based Modeling and Algorithmic Finance: What ABM might teach Economic Sociology about Inter-Algorithmic Sociality
12.30Hanno Pahl (Ludwig-Maximulian-University München)
Agent-Based Modeling in Macroeconomics: Opportunities and Obstacles. Some Evidence from the Field.
13.30Sebastian Vehlken, Ricky Wichum
Closing Remarks
Friday June 24, 2016
10.00Rainer Hegselmann (Bayreuth University)
Thomas Schelling and James M. Sakoda: How to Become an Unknown Pioneer?
11.00

Coffee Break

11.30Franck Varenne (University of Rouen/CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
On Methodological Discretism
12.30Lunch Break
14.00Klaus G. Troitzsch (University of Koblenz-Landau)
Can Agent-based Simulation Models Replicate Organized Crime?
15.00Alexander Galloway (New York University)
The Computational Decision
16.00

Coffee Break

16.30Petra Gehring (TU Darmstadt)
Drawn from Life: Power of a Paradigm
17.30Get Together
18.30Keynote
Sara Y. Del Valle (Los Alamos Laboratory)
Agent-based Modeling Approaches for Simulating Infectious Diseases
20.00Drinks & Dinner
Schröders Biergarten, Adress: Vor dem Roten Tore 72, 21335 Lüneburg

Hashtag
#agntcults

Concept & Organization
Sebastian Vehlken
Ricky Wichum

 

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