Niche construction theory is a relatively new approach in evolutionary biology that seeks to integrate an ecological dimension into the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. It is regarded by many evolutionary biologists as providing a significant revision of the Neo-Darwinian modern synthesis that unified Darwin's theory of natural and sexual selection with 20th century populatio...

Approaches to artificial intelligence research based on autonomous agents have thus far primarily relied on cognitive science and other psychologically motivated approaches to the social world. These approaches have been a logical outcome of the researchers' concentration on agent building. However, recent developments in the field have revealed the need for a wider and primarily socially cente...

We study the exchange of information in collective information systems mediated by information agents, focusing specifically on the problem of semantic interoperability. We advocate the use of mechanisms inspired from natural language, that enable each agent to develop a repertoire of grounded categories and labels for these categories and negotiate their use with other agents. The communicatio...

Recent developments in Human-Computer interaction (HCI), computer supported co-operative work (CSCW) and a distributed approach to artificial intelligence (DAI) share a common problem: communication. We are moving towards a situation of multiple interacting systems. Some of these systems will be humans, others will be 'intelligent' agents and still others will be 'dumb' devices. Unless we are c...

During the 1950s and 1960s, genetics and cell and molecular biology have been swamped by terms borrowed from information theory. This ‘information talk’ still pervades these fields, including widely used terms such as ‘genetic code’, ‘messenger RNA’, ‘transcription’, ‘translation’, ‘transduction’, ‘genetic information’, ‘chemical signals’, ‘cell signaling’ etc. But, as the concept of informatio...