The human in the loop: volunteer-based metacomputers as a socio-technical system

Abstract

Volunteer computing is a form of distributed computing where users decide on their participation and the amount of time and other resources they will "lend". This makes them an essential part of the algorithm and of the performance of the whole system. As a socio-technical system, this participation follows some patterns and in this paper we examine the result of several volunteer distributed evolutionary computation experiments and try to find out what those patterns are and what makes an experiment successful or not, including the feedback loop that is created between the users and the algorithm itself.

Alife in the Clouds: A Short Review of Applications of Artificial Life to Cloud Computing and Back

“…The almost organic and decidedly complex nature of largescale cloud deployments and the fact that they constitute a technosocial system (Vespignani, 2009;Merelo et al, 2016) hints at some relationship between both scientific and engineering fields; however, for the time being that has not been the case to a large extent, to the point that the recent ECAL 2017 conference (Knibbe et al, 2017) only has a passing reference to cloud systems.…”