Cybernetic

Adaptive control in the face of uncertainty involves making online predictions about events in order to plan actions to reliably achieve desirable outcomes. However, we often face situations in which the effects of our actions are probabilistic (e.g., returns on our investments), and the environment itself is dynamic, - it can change irrespective of any action we decide to take, and in a relatively stable or unstable way (e.g., economic climate). Therefore, the problem of control concerns learning to isolate the effects that are generated directly by our actions, from those that occur independently of them. We face this problem in a host of uncertain dynamic environments: ecological (using fertilizers to increase crop yield), economic (investing in real estate), industrial (operating nuclear power plants), mechanical (driving cars) and medical (stemming outbreaks of disease). Thus far there has been little attempt at a synthesis of the amassing research directed towards understanding control in the face of uncertainty. The aim of this book is to bring together theoretical and empirical research from disparate disciplines spanning Social, Cognitive and Clinical Psychology, Human Factors and Neuroscience to Engineering and Machine learning. It serves as a round up of the different techniques used to examine issues concerning control (prediction, agency, causality, uncertainty) and unifies a substantial amount of disparate research. The general framework (Monitoring and control- MC framework) used to achieve this proposes two central ideas (agency, uncertainty) that have important ramifications across disciplines. In sum, control processes involve self-regulatory mechanisms that enable us to make subjective estimates of success, which helps to anchor our interpretation of uncertain events. In addition, these estimates are integrated with estimations of rates of change of the events in the environment which helps us track the outcomes we aim to control.

Después de un año de la victoria electoral de Barack Obama, el actual presidente de los Estados Unidos mantiene unas cotas de popularidad muy elevadas, máxime si tenemos en cuenta la actual coyuntura de crisis que afecta de manera frontal a los Estados Unidos. El presente artículo, a partir del estudio de un estado concreto: Carolina del Norte, explica cuáles son las bases sobre las que se sustenta dicho apoyo, bases que tienen que ver con un trabajo realizado desde las elecciones primarias del Partido Demócrata y que se sustentan en un adecuado uso de las redes sociales, tanto virtuales como reales. Para demostrar esta hipótesis, se muestran los resultados de un vasto trabajo de campo realizado, fundamentalmente con dos redes que han centrado sus esfuerzos en afianzar el voto joven y el voto femenino: "Generation Engage‟ y "Mom for Obama‟.