Bøger af Mark Burgess

Brexit offers a rare opportunity to examine a complicated network of intentions and processes, through the lens of promise theory. In this volume, we examine the arguments and positions surrounding the UK's Brexit process, starting from the beginning. This book argues that promises have played a central role in its unfolding, and that the simple formalities of promise theory are quite helpful in assessing the kinds of claims made, and their likelihood of being realized.

`The err is human, to explain is [Mark Burgess]'--Patrick Debois `One of the best reads and written by one of the best minds!'--Glenn O'Donnell (about In Search of Certainty) What if space is not like we learn in mathematics, but more like a network? What happens to the ability to measure things as you shrink or expand? Since Einstein, space and time were the province of theoretical physicists and science fiction writers, but today they are of equal importance in Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and even Biology. This book tells a new and radical story of space and time, rooted in fundamental physics but going beyond to underpin some of the biggest questions in science and technology. This is a book about physics, it's about computers, artificial intelligence, and many other topics on surface. It's about everything that has to do with information. It draws on examples from every avenue of life, and pulls apart preconceptions that have been programmed into us from childhood. It re-examines ideas like distance, time, and speed, and asks if we really know what those things are. If they are really so fundamental and universal concepts then can we also see them and use them in computers, or in the growing of a plant? Conversely, can we see phenomena we know from computers in physics? We can learn a lot by comparing the way we describe physics with the way we describe computers---and that throws up a radical view: the concept ofvirtualization, and what it might mean for physics. `I think that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that [Mark Burgess] is the closest thing to Richard Feynman within our industry' --Cameron Haight `...magnificent; a tour de force of connecting the dots of many disciplines... Mark's combination of originality, synthesis and practicality knows no equal.'--Paul Borrill

Quite soon, the worlds information infrastructure is going to reach a level of scale and complexity that will force scientists and engineers to approach it in an entirely new way. The familiar notions of command and control are being thwarted by realities of a faster, denser world of communication where choice, variety, and indeterminism rule. The myth of the machine that does exactly what we tell it has come to an end.What makes us think we can rely on all this technology? What keeps it together today, and how might it work tomorrow? Will we know how to build the next generationor will we be lulled into a stupor of dependence brought about by its conveniences?In this book, Mark Burgess focuses on the impact of computers and information on our modern infrastructure by taking you from the roots of science to the principles behind system operation and design. To shape the future of technology, we need to understand how it worksor else what we dont understand will end up shaping us.This book explores this subject in three parts:Part I, Stability: describes the fundamentals of predictability, and why we have to give up the idea of control in its classical meaningPart II, Certainty: describes the science of what we can know, when we dont control everything, and how we make the best of life with only imperfect informationPart III, Promises: explains how the concepts of stability and certainty may be combined to approach information infrastructure as a new kind of virtual material, restoring a continuity to human-computer systems so that society can rely on them.

Imagine a set of simple principles that could help you to understand how parts combine to become a whole, and how each part sees the whole from its own perspective. If such principles were any good, it shouldnt matter whether were talking about humans on a team, birds in a flock, computers in a datacenter, or cogs in a Swiss watch. A theory of cooperation ought to be pretty universal, so we should be able to apply it both to technology and to the workplace.Such principles are the subject of Promise Theory, and the focus of this insightful book. The goal of Promise Theory is to reveal the behavior of a whole from the sum of its parts, taking the viewpoint of the parts rather than the whole. In other words, it is a bottom-up, constructionist view of the world. Start Thinking in Promises and find out why this discipline works for documenting system behaviors from the bottom-up.

This 2002 book discusses the classical foundations of field theory, using the language of variational methods and covariance. It explores the limits of what can be achieved with purely classical notions, and shows how these have a deep and important connection with the second quantized field theory, which follows on from the Schwinger Action Principle. The book takes a pragmatic view of field theory, focusing on issues which are usually omitted from quantum field theory texts and cataloging results which are often hard to find in the literature. Care is taken to explain how results arise and how to interpret them physically, for graduate students starting out in the field. Many physical examples are provided, making the book an ideal supplementary text for courses on elementary field theory, group theory and dynamical systems. It will also be a valuable reference for researchers already working in these and related areas.