Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
Seemingly Incompatible: Chemical
Reaction-Diffusion Media and Artificial
Intelligence
The variety of phenomena that may be described by this
sort of reaction-diffusion equation is quite amazing
I. Prigogine. “
From Being to Becoming
”
4.1
Information Requirements of the Postindustrial Society
and the von Neumann Paradigm
In the early 1940s of the last century humanity faced grand technical and techno-
logical challenges associated with enormous demand for computing. The John von
Neumann paradigm proposed at that time, which laid the foundation for designing
digital computers, made it possible to create effective computing devices to address
the most pressing engineering problems and to continue improving them up to the
present day. The success of the von Neumann paradigm rested on its suitability for
solving massive computational tasks which were at the core of the most important
engineering problems. Human information processing style discussed in the
1940s—the neural network approach of McCulloch and Pitts—turned out to be
premature, since the main trends in the development of information-logical devices
in those years were determined by engineering and technological computing tasks
that could be effectively solved with digital computers.
Development priorities and needs of the human society were changing during the
second half of the last century. And, since the 1980s-1990s, along with engineering
problems, the understanding of the dynamics of large dynamic systems and the
development of methods to control them was becoming increasingly relevant. This
applies to a wide range of objects, from biological communities (a group of apes, a
wolf pack, an anthill) to physical and chemical environments with complex nonlinear
interactions between components. The processes in such systems play an important
role in nature and in human society. They become apparent in a variety of physical,
chemical, and biological objects, in large transportation systems, as well as in human
communities, in particular in the form of various economic and sociological phe-
nomena. Their study allows us to understand and prevent epidemic diseases, to create
