Living Earth Simulator: the ultimate HPC big-data application
December 6, 2011
The European Union (EU) is pledging 1 billion euros over 10 years on a set of advanced computer technologies, including a supercomputing network designed to forecast social and economic events, in particular, crisis events.
The supercomputing side of the effort has been given the grand title of the Living Earth Simulator (LES). The LES is part of the FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator Project, which also encompasses a global sensor network Planetary Nervous System) and a framework for individuals and organizations to share data (Global Participatory Platform). The LES system will gather information from the sensor network, Twitter, web news searches, and a wide variety of other real-time sources, and try and tease out higher level societal trends.
The system could also be used to identify political unrest, the spread of epidemics, economic bubbles, and other types of systematic instabilities. About 30 computer science centers around the world have pledged support for the project.
[ HPCWire ]
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Comments (9)
by Dennis383
This sounds more descriptive than predictive to me. “Real-time news sources” merely describes the recent past– as do Twitter posts. Users will be able to see trends developing, but they won’t be able to predict (with certainty) how they will develop or in which direction. Some of the information will prove socially useful in the right hands. Much of it will be like a sporting event unfolding. Some will cheer the outcome, others will be downhearted. Over time, it will help some visionaries see a little further and will cause many to blame their own sorry state on a system they can’t comprehend let alone control. Which is not that different from the lives that many live now.
by Spikosauropod
@ Giulio Prisco
If the machine is wise enough not to make this prediction, it will still be smashed into pieces. I don’t see why this is not obvious to its proponents.
Suppose, for example that the machine had predicted the current price of gold. Everyone would have jumped ahead and bought gold. Inevitably the price would go up, and far ahead of schedule. Then, the machine would predict that the gold market will go bust. Everyone would be in a panic to sell their gold, but no one would be willing to buy. This is about when people would start considering how best to dispatch “the machine”.
The alternate scenario is that a small select group of people would be privy to the machines predictions and disseminate information as they saw fit. This would raise eyebrows as these people, armed with the ultimate insider trading advantage, grew rich using a machine that every tax payer in the EU had helped to finance.
Nothing good will come of this machine.
by Muld2937
This is Fassbinders “Welt am Draht”. The early seventies two part TV movie about a world simulation computer. It is re-released last year. Nice plot. Used decades later in some other movie about simulating the world.
by eldras
very Asimov. the spin offs from the research will be good too.
Anything that speeds mega computing.
by melajara
Exactly, welcome to Hari Seldon’s psychohistory
Btw, it is funny to see how conservative Trantor’s universe is.
However, where is the hyperdrive?
Propulsion is the big disillusion of our age.
by Giulio Prisco
@Spikosauropod – the machine will never make this prediction if it is smart: if the prediction is true, it will be destroyed by the mob – and if the prediction is false, it will be powered off because it gives wrong answers.
by Spikosauropod
If this machine is actually built, it will make precisely one accurate prediction: that within one month an angry mob will show up with pipes and wrenches to beat it and its creators into unidentifiable pieces.
by Giulio Prisco
@cfox – because EU bureaucrats have stopped at Asimov and are not aware of modern sci-fi
by cfox@ma.rr.com
why is this starting to sound like the Foundation series of sci-fi novels?