Now that we have these two books,is there a way to try and apply any of
the ideas in them to our social structures? Does it mean that we have to
strive for simple small uncomplicated communitues, whether urban or rural?
Gidon Elad
Kibbutz Chatzerim,Israel
Negev 85420
Fax:972-7-420098
Tel:972-7-473536
On Fri, 28 Apr 1995, Emily Myers wrote:
> Flemming,
> Your post brings to mind the work of Mitchel Resnick (MIT Media Lab) on self
> organizing systems. He has developed a computer modeling language with
> which to explore the concept of self organizing systems in contrast to top
> down organization. His book "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams" is good
> reading.
> Emily
> Emily R. Myers
> Mobius Project
> Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania 19317 US
> Voice (610) 388 1274 FX (610) 388 0555
> emyers@ccantares.wcupa.edu
>
>
> On Thu, 27 Apr 1995, Flemming Funch wrote:
>
> > I am reading the book "Out of Control - The New Biology of Machines, Social
> > Systems, and the Economic World" by Kevin Kelly, which I very much
> > recommend.
> >
> > For NCN purposes there are some very valuable ideas in there on how to grow
> > a complex system from simple parts, developing it biologically, from the
> > bottom up, rather than imposing an authoritative design from the top and
> > down.
> >
> > For example, this is a recipe for distributed control and for managing
> > complexity, developed from robot research:
> >
> > 1) Do simple things first
> > 2) Learn to do them flawlessly
> > 3) Add new layers of activity over the results of the simple tasks.
> > 4) Don't change the simple things.
> > 5) Make the new layer work as flawlessly as the simple.
> > 6) Repeat, ad infinitum.
> >
> > A civilization is immensely complex. But we don't have to fathom all the
> > complexity in one chunk. We can get some simple elements to work and then
> > build on those, without dismantling what works.
> >
> > "Complexity is grown from simple systems that already work."
> >
> > - Flemming
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > o o
> > / \------------------ Flemming A. Funch ------------------/ \
> > / * \ World Transformation/New Civilization/Whole Systems / * \
> > / * * \ ffunch@netcom.com / * * \
> > o-------o ------http://www.protree.com/worldtrans/--------o-------o
> >
> >
>
>
>
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