I am a senior research fellow at The Open University in the UK. I do research at the overlap between computer science and social science. I am interested in open distributed systems that include both machine and human agencies where the imposition of central control is not an option and one can't rely on the "invisible hands" of orthodox economic (or game) theory. A synthesis is required between new kinds of social theory applicable to the artificial domain and distributed self-organising systems programming. Such a synthesis could transform, not just technology but, human societies in profound ways.

I have explored these ideas through evolutionary cooperation theory, complex networks, agent-based modelling and peer-to-peer systems. Recently I have become interested in how open distributed systems might provide novel ways to support financial functions without the need for centralised institutions such as banks. I am also interested in the application of new approaches to collective coordination that focus on social interaction rather than traditional economics-type incentive mechanisms.

Video - T.U. Dresden 2007	Video - Imperial College 2010	Article - PerAda Magazine 2011	Article - New Scientist 2005

Selected Publications

• Rahman, R., Vinko, T., Hales, D., Pouwelse, J. and Sips, H. (2011). Design Space Analysis for Modeling Incentives in Distributed Systems. ACM SIGCOMM 2011. PDF.
• Hales, D., (2010) Rationality meets the Tribe: Recent Models of Cultural Group Selection. In Mollona, E., (ed) Computational Analysis of Firms’ Organization and Strategic Behaviour. Routledge. PDF.
• Hales, D., Rahman, R., Zhang, B., Meulpolder M., and Pouwelse, J. (2009) BitTorrent or BitCrunch: Evidence of a credit squeeze in BitTorrent? Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Collaborative Peer-to-Peer Systems (COPS) Workshop. PDF.
• Hales, D. & Arteconi, S. (2006) SLACER: A Self-Organizing Protocol for Coordination in P2P Networks. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(2):29-35. PDF.
• Hales, D. & Edmonds, B. (2005) Applying a socially-inspired technique (tags) to improve cooperation in P2P Networks. IEEE Transactions in Systems, Man and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans, 35(3):385-395. PDF.
  

Selected Talks

• Hales, D. (2011) The social transformation and your role in it. Invited talk - PhD in progress workshop at the ECCS2011 conference, Vienna, 14th Sept. PDF.
  
• Halas, D. (2011) Denationalising Money: can quality emerge? Presented at the NESS workshop at the ECCS2011 conference, Vienna, 14th Sept. PDF. Abstract of talk PDF.
  
• Hales, D. (2011) The Socio-Economics of P2P Systems. Invited talk - Warwick Business School Exective MBA programme, Warwick, UK, 16th June. PDF.
• Hales, D. (2011) The Socio-Economics of Pervasive Systems. Invited talk - EPFL Summer Research Institute, Lausanne, Switzerland, 14th June. PDF.
• Hales, D. (2010) Towards a Quality Financial Commons? Invited talk - Quality Commons Workshop, Paris, January 2010. PDF. Position statement PDF.
  

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