The dynamics of correlated novelties

Vittorio LoretoSapienza University of Rome

ISI Foundation, Turin

with V. ServedioS. Strogatz

F. Tria

Bio-techno-social systems

community level

user levelcognitive,

behavioural,biologic

social, interactive

infrastructure level

ICT, networks,physical-digital

A new platform for web-gaming and social computation

http://www.xtribe.eu/

Biology

Social systems

Technology

Arts, Science, Architecture, Urbanism, ....

Diffusion

Ahead of time

Serendipity

Tinkering

Exaptation

Success

Trial and Error

MultiplesMutation / Fixation

Our lives are spiced with little novelties...

a new songa new book

a new persona new word

a new web page...

... and often one thing leads to anotherone innovation sets the stage for another

Adjacent possible Consists of all those things (depending on the context, these could be ideas, molecules, genomes, technological products, etc.) that are one step away from what actually exists, and hence can arise from incremental modifications and recombinations of existing material.

S. A. Kauffman, Investigations (Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford, 2000).

The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries.

A mathematical framework for the adjacent possible

Can we model it ?

Is the adjacent possible for real ?

Can we find its signature in reality ?

natural texts

natural texts

Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; --B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceive of this as a complete primitive language.

(L. Wittgenstein)

Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; --B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceive of this as a complete primitive language.

(L. Wittgenstein)

frequency of words

rank

Zipf’s law (frequency rank plot)

Zipf's law in city populations

Zipf's law in Web Access Statistics and Internet Traffic

Zipf's law in bibliometrics, informetrics, scientometrics, and library science Zipf's law in finance and business

Zipf's law in ecological systems

Zipf's law in earthquake?

http://www.nslij-genetics.org/wli/zipf/

Zipf’s law

Zipf’s law in texts

Gutenberg Project ebook collectiondocument

s wordsdistinct words

innovation in natural texts

Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; --B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceive of this as a complete primitive language.

(L. Wittgenstein)

Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; --B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceive of this as a complete primitive language.

(L. Wittgenstein)

number of distinct words

number of words

Heaps’ law in texts

Gutenberg Project ebook collectiondocument

s wordsdistinct words

# of new words

frequency of words

social annotation

resource

user

{ tags }

post

http://del.icio.us

Zipf’s law

high rank

Heaps’ law

English WikipediaEnglish Wikipedia

20 TB (downloaded on March the 7th 2012)

Red LinkMother page

Mother page

Wikipedia dump 20 TBbytes (3/2012)

# of new edits

frequency of edits

Last.fm

1000 users; listened tracks user, time stamp, artist, track-id and track name

Modeling the adjacent possible

Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler.

A. Einstein

t t+1

Adjacent possiblet t+1

Reinforcement

Polya Urn model with triggering

Actual history

like Yule-Simon model

Zipf’s law

Generalized Zipf’s law + Heaps’

Urn model with triggering (results)

Adjacent possible

Reinforcement

+

Zipf’s AND Heaps’laws

First conclusion:

Grounding the notion of “one thing leads to

another”

Semantics

Artists

Mother page

Words

Quantifying triggering effects

number of occurrences of the label A in

number of occurrences of the label A inthe interval i

Distribution of time intervals between two successive appearances of events belonging to the same semantic group

Results

Wikipedia Last.fm Model

Conclusions

Reinforcement and adjacent possible help explaining how one innovation sets the stage for another.

Human activities feature strong correlations in their innovation processes

Challenges

early adoption vs. large-scale spreading

multiples and competition of several innovations

innovations too far ahead of their time

Relevant fieldsbiology (pangenome, influenza, etc.)social sciences (opinions, languages, norms, cultural traits,

policy making, marketing, etc.)technology

best environments and strategies

individual vs. collective behaviors

C. Cattuto, VL and L. Pietronero, Semiotic Dynamics and Collaborative Tagging,Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (PNAS), 104, 1461-1464 (2007).

C. Cattuto, A. Barrat, A. Baldassarri, G. Schehr and VL, Collective dynamics of social annotation, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (PNAS), 106, 10511-10515 (2009).

C. Castellano, S. Fortunato and VL,Statistical physics of social dynamicsRev. Mod. Phys., 81, 591-645 (2009).

F. Tria, V.D.P. Servedio, S. Strogatz and VLThe dynamics of correlated noveltiessubmitted (2013).

Recent publications

http://samarcanda.phys.uniroma1.it/vittorioloreto/

Vito D.P. Servedio

Steven Strogatz

Francesca Tria

Thankyou

http://www.everyaware.eu/

http://www.xtribe.eu/