Factory of realities: on the emergence of virtual spatiotemporal structures

TL;DR

This paper explores the emergence of new virtual realities in information retrieval and digital environments, proposing physical-like models and conceptual frameworks to understand their properties and behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel perspective by modeling virtual informational structures as physical-like realities using topos theory and other analogies.

Findings

Adaptive neural networks behave like extended classical ANNs.

Objects resembling Einsteinian spacetime describe internet user behavior.

Information retrieval exhibits nonclassical, stronger-than-quantum probabilities.

Abstract

The ubiquitous nature of modern Information Retrieval and Virtual World give rise to new realities. To what extent are these "realities" real? Which "physics" should be applied to quantitatively describe them? In this essay I dwell on few examples. The first is Adaptive neural networks, which are not networks and not neural, but still provide service similar to classical ANNs in extended fashion. The second is the emergence of objects looking like Einsteinian spacetime, which describe the behavior of an Internet surfer like geodesic motion. The third is the demonstration of nonclassical and even stronger-than-quantum probabilities in Information Retrieval, their use. Immense operable datasets provide new operationalistic environments, which become to greater and greater extent "realities". In this essay, I consider the overall Information Retrieval process as an objective physical process, representing it according to Melucci metaphor in terms of physical-like experiments. Various semantic environments are treated as analogs of various realities. The readers' attention is drawn to topos approach to physical theories, which provides a natural conceptual and technical framework to cope with the new emerging realities.