CAS is Complex Adaptive Systems in this context, but I doubt over half
of the list would have known that off hand... I hope one of us will
update the disambiguation page on WikiPedia.
Reminds me of an old joke from the AI heyday of the 1980s, about two
guys sitting in adjacent seats on the airplane, and through casual
conversation they learn that they are each going to a different AI
conference in the same city. They talked in such broad generalities
about their work that it was nearly an hour before they realized that
one was a computer scientist going to an Artificial Intelligence
conference, while the other was a rancher going to an Artificial
Insemination conference.
In my early technical career (1980-1985), I had conversations like this
at cocktail parties on two projects I worked on (Advanced Interactive
Display System - AIDS) and (Easy Structured Programming - ESP). I
literally would talk to someone from outside my technical sphere for
several minutes in vague generalities until one of us realized we were
not talking about the same thing. The key to AIDS was that it was not
part of the public vernacular at that time (yet) and the key to ESP was
that I could never imagine anyone actually believed in Extra Sensory
Perception in any literal way. But I was young and hadn't come to
understand Santa Fe in the New Age yet.
- Steve
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