Silicon Taiga: EIC '05 Orlando, Florida, USA

Energy, Informatics and Cybernetics are being increasingly interrelated, complementing each other in theory and practice. Consequently, growing number interdisciplinary projects, in these areas, are emerging, in the academy and industry. Cross-fertilization among the three can be found in academic and industrial research, as well as in innovations, products and new applications.

Accordingly, the basic purpose in organizing The International Conference on Energy, Informatics and Cybernetics: EIC 2005, is to bring together researchers, professionals, practitioners, consultants and managers, from the academic, public and private sectors; and to provide them with a forum to present their works, solutions and problems in these fields, as well as in the relationships among them.

EIC 2005 Organizing Committee invite authors to submit their original and unpublished works, innovations, problems that require solutions, position papers, case studies, etc., in the fields of energy as well as in the conceptual and instrumental applications of informatics and cybernetics in the different energy’s fields.

EIC 2005 Organizing Committee invite authors to submit conceptual/theoretical as well as applied/instrumental papers, solution and problem oriented papers, with academic or industrial perspective. A principal objective to relate and integrate not just the three mentioned areas, but also participants from academic, private and public sectors. Consequently, the integrating purpose is two-dimensional: Among the three cited sectors and the three mentioned areas.

Papers might be submitted via web page http://www.iiisci.org/eic05/website/submission.asp, as extended abstracts (500-2000) words or as full papers drafts (2000-5000) words. Reviews will be done for both kinds of submissions.

Invited Sessions proposals can be done filling the form given in the web page
http://www.iiisci.org/eic05/invitedsession/organizer.asp.

More information about Invited Sessions Organization could be found at the web page http://www.iiisci.org/eic05/website/ISOrganization.asp.

All accepted submissions will be published in the conference proceedings. Best papers will also be published in special issue(s) of The Journal of Systemics, Informatics and Cybernetics (JSCI). Furthermore, if an adequate number of quality papers are presented on the conceptual/theoretical relationships among Energy, Information and Cybernetics, another special issue of JSCI and/or a multiple authors book will also be published on the subject. In such a case, the possible title will be: Energy, Information and Cybernetics: Conceptual, Theoretical and Practical Relationships.

Energy, Information and Cybernetics are conceptually and ontologically related. The importance of these relationships is increasing in both: the intellectual and practical domains.

The isomorphism found between Shannon’s mathematical definition of “information” and the Second Law of Thermodynamics seems not to be a mere coincidence or an intellectual curiosity with no practical value. Thermodynamics entropy and information (negantropy, or negative entropy) seem to relate each other not just in mathematical isomorphism, but also to hold the possibilities of integration with each other in very practical and useful ways. As an example, we can cite the demonstration made by Prof. Erhard Moeller of the Fachhochschule Aachen in Germany, at the “Hacking in Progress Conference” (HIP ’97), who by means of van Eck monitoring, who showed that computer monitors radiate the video signal they are displaying, and this radiation can be picked up using an antenna and then displayed at another monitor. This means, according to Richard Thieme, that radiation leaking from your PC means energy and information leaking from it can be reconstructed into useful forms. “Hackers - he says - do not have to break into your system if the system is leaking energy and information; they just have to capture and reconstitute in useful forms…the information leaked from your PC monitor, even when it meets all the standards proscribed by law, can be reconstituted on a screen a t a distance greater than the length of a football field, and every thing you are seeing at this moment can be seen by that fellow in the van down the block as well.” (Thieme, 1997) This is a fact with strong implications in the area of information security. The conceptual and the possible ontological relationships between energy and information have a practical impact with a high pragmatic value. And, cyberspace is also strongly related to this issue. The global network - Thieme insightfully wrote - “is a mediating structure though which information and energy is transmitted literally as well as in symbolic forms.” Hence, energy, information and cyberspace are conceptually and ontologically related in such a way as to impact pragmatic dimensions and practical perspectives.

Since its historical origins up to the present, Cybernetics, as well as its core concepts, has been strongly related to energy. Wiener, who coined the term “cybernetics”, defined it as “the science of control and communications in the animal and the machine”. This definition clearly, though implicitly, relates cybernetics to energy. To be useful, energy should be controlled and communicated (transported, distributed). So, energy, as long as it can be “cybernetized”, might be useful, constructive. In the other hand, cybernetics includes the studies of organisms, which interchange energy with their environment, i.e. they are systems that energetically are open. This is why Ashby, one of the fathers of cybernetics, stressed that “Cybernetics, might, in fact, be defined as the study of systems that are open to energy but closed to information and control.” (Ashby, 1956; p.4)

The cybernetic concepts of negative and positive feedback controls are at the heart of recent theories regarding energy and thermodynamics. Progogine’s work proved that, in open systems, entropy dissipated to the environment of the system, becomes a source of order inside the system (negantropy, information). Dissipative structures receive energy from its external environment, and positive feedback loops amplify the jumps and instabilities produced in them, resulting in new forms of organizations. By means of cybernetic concepts (as it is the case of positive feedback) energy and information have been related in the context of new theories and new applications.

More information you can find here