Growing Artificial Societies: Sugarscape / News: Recent posts

1) Introduction
---------------

This project applies computer-based modeling techniques to enable the study of human social phenomena. I have already completed some processes including gathering, mating, procreation, seasonal migration, trade along with user interaction via a command line. I plan to include propogation of disease, culture conflicts & more in future versions.

The major problem in any such endeavor is the design of the environment & the flexibility that such design provides the ultimate end-users (the social science research community). Life as we know it, is pretty complicated. Once we get beyond the relatively simple rules for survival, gathering, propogation we encounter complexities like culture, group formation, personality development. Incorporating economic processes like trade and the development of diverse industry are also a challenging issue to design & program in a simulation.... read more

The Sugarscape project attempts to apply computer-based modeling techniques to study human social phenomena including gathering, migration, interaction with an environment, trade, propagation of disease, population dynamics & much more.

The broad aim here is to develop computational approach that permits the study of diverse types of human activity from an evolutionary perspective. Utility for education & research also requires the ability to configure various parameters controlling the simulation.... read more