Starlogo

Starlogo is a computer language aimed at understanding decentralized systems. Such systems,like the whole life, ecosystems, societies,markets, and other social science phenomena, not forgetting our own brain, are characterized by the absense on any centralized process, any order coming from "above": their working is conditionned only by the behavior of ultplie agents interacting continuously: they are, in the truest meaning of the word, "p2p" systems. But our logic, our understanding is faicng an obstacle: it is hard for us to understand how these systems work. the resulkt of a collective behavior is frequantly unpredictable, vcounter-intuitive.Having constated that this understanding of decentralized systems is so diffciult to grasp,and simultaeously so important, Mitchel Resnick, of MIt tried to create an intellectual tool helping any of us to increase our intellectual astery on them. Starlogo is not, therefore, a computer labvuage like the others: it is not aimed at creating applications which may be of use by professionals. Neither it is aimed at experts in economy or ecology, or mathematicians working in computer simaultions: it is a tool for anybody, and especially, the children (Starlogo is in fact an evolution of the old Seymour Papert computer language for kids, Logo). it's only goals is to make us understand the hard notions of collective behavior, emergence, collective intelligence (the last versions of starlogo seem to go farther than this pure intellectual endeavour and now include some elements of game programming: something the children will certainly not complain about!)