Steve Hall

I'm the technical lead/manager of a small group of scientist, engineers and analysts at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center who focus on 'system of system' modeling and simulation in support of effectiveness analysis. Our goal is to provide advice on what systems the U.S. Government ought to procure in order to provide the best 'bang for the buck'. In recent years networking advances have started to have a profound influence on how the behavior of these elements are coordinated ... and on what we want and can reasonably expect of their collective/emergent behavior. I'm looking to better understand the role of complexity theory in designing and controlling these next generation architectures.

In ancient times I graduated with a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science after studying the process through which we acquire the mutual knowledge (the rules) that govern conversation.

Cell Phone Number: 408 807 3437 Email: steve.hall@lmco.com

Halloween 2006

In my spare time I enjoy wood working, good music and theater and good conversation.

Dan's questions:

1. What are your main interests? Feel free to include a "pie in the sky" big idea!

My fundamental interests revolve around how to 'engineer' such systems so that their emergent behaviors produce the desired effects ... an objective made more challenging as traditional military objectives become intertwined with traditional diplomatic objectives.

I'm interested in understanding the 'proper' role of the human that's ultimately responsible for the swarm's emergent behavior.

I'm interested in understanding the critical elements of swarms whose fundamental environment is defined by other (potentially hostile) swarms. E.g. how the swarm recognizes emergent behavior (its own and others) and responds intelligently to it.

I'm interested in understanding how and when swarms organize, disorganize and/or determine the 'optimal' level of organization. Does the nature of the external swarm(s) determine the optimal level of self organization and/or cohesiveness of response?

I'm interested in understanding how shared narratives (or memes) come into existence and how they (should?) influence what individual agents perceive and consequently do. Does post structuralist thought offer something of value to the CAS theorist?

I'm particularly interested in economic models of collective behavior and how they can be applied to this domain as well as the relationship between biological defense mechanisms and military defense mechanisms.

2. What sorts of expertise can you bring to the group?

I increasingly have a manager's proficiency with technical challenges compensated for by a growing sense of both what's needed and what's possible.

I've architected and managed the development of a sizeable system of system modeling and simulation environment and used it to explore complex adaptive systems behavior using market oriented programming techniques and evolutionary algorithms.

I'm not bad at asking questions.

3. What do you hope to get out of the CSSS?

I hope to enhance my understanding of what a complex adaptive system is ... and how to build one.

I hope to meet other people who are interested in complex adaptive systems. (And that might be able to help me engineer them.)

I hope to carry away with me some new metaphors for thinking about such things.

I hope to learn more about promising tools and methodologies.

4. Do you have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS?

I have broad interests (and much to learn) in this domain and would be happy to work on many projects.

But I have been tickled by the following concept: There is a tool called EINSTEIN (http://www.cna.org/isaac/einstein_splash.htm) [I'm sure other tools could work as well.] where two swarms can be made to interact in interesting ways. One of the simple examples results in the two swarms chasing each other's tail. In such engagements there are significant advantages to being able to surround the other guys ... as opposed to chasing them. I'd like to see this example enhanced so that one swarm could recognize this mutual emergent behavior and modify its behavior to take advantage of it.