There's a Swiss consulate across the street from the new Cambridge, MA main library which sponsors a lot of events. On 6/7/11, the subject was FuturICT (http://www.futurict.ethz.ch/...) (ICT stands for information and communications technology) with Dr Dirk Helbing of ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Dr Helbing is the Chair of Sociology, with particular emphasis on Modeling and Simulation, at ETH. He studies research on disaster spreading and disaster response as well as crowds, movement, and traffic. (I like his "outbreak of cooperation among success-driven individuals under noisy conditions" simulation at http://www.soms.ethz.ch/... and wonder if he's looked at Temple Grandin's work with slaughterhouses and feedlots.) He is also the scientific coordinator of FuturICT, a 10 year 1 billion EUR "multidisciplinary international scientific endeavour with a focus on techno-socio-economic-environmental systems."
FuturICT will
"Bring together the fields of ICT, social science and complexity science
• to model our social system using planetary scale simulations
• powered by a new planetary scale data science
• to enable a paradigm shift to data intensive governance so we can manage our new global society in a sustainable manner"
and accelerate that
"paradigm shift towards global-scale systems that self organize and autonomously evolve using principles inspired by social systems and complexity science. Systems will become
• socially aware,
• socially adaptive,
• participatory."
It will include a Living Earth Simulation System, Crisis Observatory, and Decision Theater.
"It's time to use the power of information to explore social and economic life on Earth and discover options for a sustainable future. Together, we can manage the challenges of the 21st century, combining the best of all knowledge."
Reminds me of Buckminster Fuller's World Game and Isaac Asimov's Foundation books, about Hari Seldon and his predictive psychohistory.