A growing body of researchers from the social and computer sciences are using computational experimentation in a highly exploratory way. The work done in this area is less "simulation" and more "construction". By analogy with artificial intelligence and artificial life, this synthetic approach has become known as artificial societies. It is argued that artificial societies can aid memetic theor...

A growing body of researchers from the social and computer sciences are using computational experimentation in a highly exploratory way. The work done in this area is less "simulation" and more "construction". By analogy with artificial intelligence and artificial life, this synthetic approach has become known as artificial societies. It is argued that artificial societies can aid memetic theor...

In this paper we explore the uses, advantages and limitations of two different paradigms in the computational simulation of complex social systems. We focus particularly on the simulation of cognitive mechanisms in social situations and illustrate our discussion with two of our current projects. We compare the now classical agent based approach (epitomized by models such as Sugarscape [Epstein ...

The aim of this paper is to assist researchers in understanding the dynamics of simulation models that have been implemented and can be run in a computer, i.e. computer models. To do that, we start by explaining (a) that computer models are just input-output functions, (b) that every computer model can be re-implemented in many different formalisms (in particular in most programming languages),...

Agent based modelling (ABM) offers a powerful abstraction for scientific study in broad range of domains. The use agent simulators encourages good software engineering design such as separation concerns, that is, the uncoupling model description from its implementation detail. A major limitation current approaches to ABM simulation is trade off between simulator flexibility and performance. It ...

The aim of this paper is to assist researchers in understanding the dynamics of simulation models that have been implemented and can be run in a computer, i.e. computer models. To do that, we start by explaining (a) that computer models are just input-output functions, (b) that every computer model can be re-implemented in many different formalisms (in particular in most programming languages),...

This paper compares two fundamental building blocks of complex interaction-based systems: communication and cooperation. We investigate the effectiveness of communication in an environment where the need for cooperation is scalable as well as the available resources. Several aspects of communication are considered: firstly, we compare a centralised with a decentralised communication protocol; s...