The Goa Project

Fringe and Geekery

Fringe Topics and Geekery Track of The Goa Project 2016

The Fringe: Live on the Edge

This is where you have no limits. This is the part of TGP 2016 where you can truly be what you want to be and express yourself about anything. This is where the rebels and nonconformists gather and talk about anything and everything.

Fringe/Geekery is the track which hosts the content that doesn’t fit anywhere else. If your talk is the square peg and the other tracks are round, come to Fringe and find your place - we’ll talk about anything that you’re passionate about and want to tell us about. The zanier and more offbeat the better - we don’t have guidelines for Fringe, because there aren’t any - there is no content limitation and no restriction - come and tell us about your passion (except for the overall restrictions placed on politics and religion).

In particular, the geekery aspect of this track is unique: While modern civilisation may exist purely due to technology and the inventions of the gifted geeks among us, there are few platforms where geeks get to communicate and discuss their vision of what can be, and what must be.

This year, we hope to touch upon forward-looking sessions, participate in sessions that bridge the gap between where we are today and the fantastic future that geekdom is envisioning and creating: Renewable energy and the end of the oil economy, Elon Musk, Artificial Intelligence and interplanetary diaspora, and perhaps the end of electronic privacy as a concept.

Proposals with a flavor of futurism, rather than a rehashing of the present, are especially welcome for this track. Promote geekdom, adopt a babygeek today!

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#The Goa Project Funnel The Goa Project is an unconference - where unlike a typical conference, the talks are not put together by a panel or knowledge partner - but is proposed by the attendees themselves. You propose a session or talk that might be of interest to the audience at the unconference, … more
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gayatri rao

@gayatrisrao

Butterflies to Chaos to Complexity... and to life thereof

Submitted Jan 18, 2016

Technical level: Advanced

This session would engage participants by
Looking at the limits of a deterministic, analytic approach to science and generally the world
Delving on some key concepts from chaos theory and the study of complex systems
Simulation of interesting models from diverse fields (ecology, social-science, computer science etc) based on the approach of complexity

Outline

Much of the scientific approach that we have inherited since the Renaissance is what could be termed as ‘reductionist’ and ‘deterministic’. To say in other words, ‘scientific approach’ is to isolate phenomena, study it in increasingly microscopic way with the aim of discovering principles o operation. The principles are often depicted as analytic, linear models - an input producing a predictable output. Any unpredictable component of the output was conveniently deemed as error or noise. But such an approach is running into its limits in different fields – genetics, economics, weather-systems, ecology, society and the universe at large. At the edge of classical science was non-linearity and randomness and ‘chaos’. It should not come as a surprise that most of the world is non-linear, complex and chaotic. To quote a mathematician ‘Using a term like nonlinear science is like referring to the bulk of zoology as the study of non-elephant animals’
Complexity as an approach to science is being employed in various fields today – physical sciences, information theory, computing, genetics, medicine, economics etc. Much of our education system and learning has been dominated by the traditional reductionist paradigms. This spills over to our general way of life. Complexity is paradigm shift in the general philosophy of its approach. Our belief is that complexity helps us in understanding the world around us better.
The talk will also include a demo of interesting models from diverse applications – from anthills to evolution to traffic to sexism. We are also trying to fiddle around and develop our own models to better understand our social context – hope to showcase that in TGP 2016!

Requirements

Projector
Whiteboard & markers

Speaker bio

Gayatri:

Vira:
I work with Thoughtworks as a Business Analyst. My resume fills with particulars of few years of various tech related roles. The usual engineer+MBA education. Bit of a sabbatical to generally travel about. Countless open browser tabs are my current reading backlog.

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Hosted by

TP
The Goa Project
#The Goa Project Funnel The Goa Project is an unconference - where unlike a typical conference, the talks are not put together by a panel or knowledge partner - but is proposed by the attendees themselves. You propose a session or talk that might be of interest to the audience at the unconference, … more