Coevolutions of Expectations and the Possibility of Their Globalization in Knowledge-Based Systems

Reflexive agents not only communicate in terms of information exchanges, but also provide these exchanges with meaning from a hindsight perspective. This is an anticipatory mechanism because an expectation can then be specified. At the level of the social system, meaning can additionally be communicated. When meanings are differently codified among subsystem, the potential asynchronicity (∆t) in the updates of the various subsystems provides the social coordination by the communication with a second anticipatory mechanism. Interactions between these two anticipatory mechanisms can lead recursively to co-evolution and stabilization of specific expectations along trajectories. However, the wider horizon of knowledgeable expectations can be expected to meta-stabilize and globalize previously stabilized trajectories of expectations. The expectations can oscillate between local stabilizations and globalization. The subdynamics of stabilization and globalization can be considered as analytically independent. Stabilization can be modeled as a consequence of interactions among incursive formulations of the logistic equation, while the modeling of globalization requires the use of a hyper-incursive formulation of this equation. Various hyper-incursive models can be distinguished. Unlike a weakly anticipatory (incursive) system, a globalized/globalizing (hyperincursive) system (co-)constructs its own future states. The strongly anticipatory subdynamic counteracts on the historical manifestations of the social system by rewriting parts of it. When the globalizing subdynamic bifurcates from the historical one, the system can rapidly become more knowledge-based. Contact: Prof. Loet Leydesdorff School of Economics (HEC) (March-July 2005) Université de Lausanne BFSH 1, 1015 Lausanne-Dorigny, Switzerland Tel: +41-21-692 3469; +41-21-652 8864 Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands Email: [email protected]