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Biologically inspired distributed machine cognition: a new
formal approach to hyperparallel computation
Rodrick Wallace, Ph.D.
The New York State Psychiatric Institute*
March 2, 2007
Abstract
The irresistable march toward multiple-core chip technology
presents currently intractable programming challenges. High
level mental processes in many animals, and their analogs for
social structures, appear similarly massively parallel, and re-
cent mathematical models addressing them may be adaptable
to the multi-core programming problem.
Key words bandpass, cognition, consciousness, directed
homotopy, global workspace, groupoid, institution, informa-
tion theory, multitasking, random network, rate distortion,
topology.
INTRODUCTION
Recent developments in multiple-core chip technology cre-
ate a powerful, hardware-driven, impetus toward highly par-
allel computing (e.g. Asanovic et al., 2006). Programming
single core machines is something of a nightmare, and the
challenges presented by hundreds, thousands, or tens of thou-
sands, of cores suggest the necessity of draconian solutions.
Asanovic et al. (2006) suggest that,
“Since real world applications are naturally par-
allel and hardware is naturally parallel, what we
need is a programming model, system software, and
a supporting architecture that are naturally paral-
lel.”
There is a successful massively parallel ‘computation’ model
in nature, which has recently been formalized (Wallace et al.,
2007), and which may be adaptable to the coming generation
of highly parallel machines. It is the model of distributed
cognition which applies in particular to humans, their cultural
artifacts, and their institutions.
For nearly a half-million years, hominids in small, well
trained, well equipped and disciplined groups, have been the
most efficient and fearsome predators on Earth. Humans,
in large-scale organization, have recast the surface features
and ecological dynamics of the entire planet. Human orga-
nizations, at all scales, are cognitive, taking the perspective
* Address Correspondenceto R. Wallace, PISCS Inc., 549 W. 123 St.,
Suite 16F, New York, NY, 10027. Telephone (212) 865-4766, email rd-
[email protected]. Affiliation is for identification only.
of Atlan and Cohen (1998), in that they perceive patterns
of threat or opportunity, compare those patterns with some
internal, learned or inherited, picture of the world, and then
choose one or a small number of responses from a vastly larger
repertory of what is possible to them. Human institutions
are now the subject of intense study from the perspectives of
distributed cognition (e.g. Patel, 1998; Cohen et al., 2006;
Laxmisan et al., 2006, and references therein; Wallace et al,
2007).
Hollan et al. (2000), expanding on previous work by
Hutchins and collaborators (e.g. Hutchins, 1994), describe
these matters as follows:
“The theory of distributed cognition, like any
cognitive theory, seeks to understand the organiza-
tion of cognitive systems. Unlike traditional theo-
ries, however, it extends the reach of what is consid-
ered cognitive beyond the individual to encompass
interactions between people and with resources and
materials in the environment. It is important from
the outset to understand that distributed cognition
refers to a perspective on all of cognition, rather than
a particular kind of cognition... Distributed cogni-
tion looks for cognitive processes, wherever they may
occur, on the basis of the functional relationships of
elements that participate together in the process. A
process is not cognitive simply because it happens in
a brain, nor is a process noncognitive simply because
it happens in the interactions between many brains...
In distributed cognition one expects to find a system
that can dynamically configure itself to bring subsys-
tems into coordination to accomplish various func-
tions. A cognitive process is delimited by the func-
tional relationships among the elements that partic-
ipate in it, rather than by the spatial colocation of
the elements... Whereas traditional views look for
cognitive events in the manipulation of symbols in-
side individual actors, distributed cognition looks for
a broader class of cognitive events and does not ex-
pect all such events to be encompasses by the skin
or skull of an individual...
-Cognitive processes may be distributed across