Peter,
If that’s what you saw in their discussion then that’s
fantastic. It’s a common either a right brain
thinking sign of an approaching “ah ha” moment to come to a real
impasse, often a sign of an approaching new realization. Either
that or of dumping the whole mess and being given the gift of a clean slate, or
both!
The basic difference I was hoping to bring out is that in natural
systems exceedingly complex things are made simple when they are pulled as a
chain of connections, but and even fairly simple things become unmanageably
complex when you try to push them as a chain. The difference
is between things getting pulled out of an environment by their user versus
being pushed together into a tangle by some observer. Observer
control of individual complex systems simply does not work. Sometimes
we can apply observer control to statistically regular things that seem to take
care of themselves the same way whatever we do to them. That
can work fine… and be quite useful. It’s no
way to steer individualistic complex systems, though.
Jane Jacobs is not the only person to point out the importance
of environmental complexity as a foundation for environmental systems to
thrive. It’s the rich diversity of different kinds of
technology, ways of thinking and overlapping interests that is key to the vitality
of the vibrant cities, industries and conversations. It has to do
with both stimulating the creativity of individual innovators and the adaptability
of their communities in a changing world. Because it’s the
diversity that allows creativity and flexibility, decreases in diversity
threaten ecosystems with collapse, as ‘one legged stools’ fall
over. An urban example is how the automotive mono-culture around
Detroit caused it to be a one-idea town that could not imagine anything else to
do, and deteriorated after the automotive boom.
The whole subject of complex natural systems is about how the
parts learn new tricks, and adapt as their own behavior or other things change their
environments. Anywhere I look for it I find the creative
parts do their part in that by local exploratory learning processes, small
scale evolutionary elaboration and selection. That’s the
inventor in the garage thing, or the idle conversations at lunch thing.
It appears to only work if the learning parts have some rich leftovers of other
forms to explore, and are not pushed in a way that disrupts their learning.
It seems to be most basic to caring for systems you really must rely on to
take care of themselves.
Phil Henshaw
From: peter [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 1:25 PM
To: [hidden email]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation
Exactly the point that stuck out to me is two experts ( Top
Rated ) from different disciplines saying " This is scary we really don't know and should find out " instead of heck lets just build
it and see if the humans live ( We don't even do that to amphibians or reptile
pets ) this from a senior member of a profession who's egos are bigger than
Everest and about as unreachable.
The big kicker here will always be "You cannot measure or model therefore
manage Giant Non linear Complex Systems with simple linear technology not mater
how pretty the GUI "
Phil mentions Jane Jacobs and her work which is full of visually identified
rules ( that work and do not ) with feedback loops and I will add Chris
Alexander http://www.patternlanguage.com/
( we are using both in our parametric model designs of education facilities
tied to educational excellence )
Jochen's point about Berlin not being the greatest place to live in can be I
think covered under " What exactly do you call excitement that every
psychopath wants to know" and as Jane Jacobs and even Ratti points
out designs go wrong but in many cases its just left up to the people in the
FUBAR to suffer baby suffer.
Again from the silliness and partially scary aspect --- model your city
or town on Discworld and see how close you can get, thats either good news or
bad depending on your Guinness quota or in Jochens case Berliner Weisse
( : ( : pete
Phil Henshaw wrote:
The idea offered that why cities become such thriving places for
humans is because of the intensity of noise in the connections is somewhat
fantastic. That’s really what Storgatz & Ratti are
proposing, as traditional science has always proposed to explain what is
inexplicable to it’s method. To their credit, the one thing
they seem to accurately agree on is that science doesn’t have a clue how
that would work, and that we do indeed observe daily that it somehow really
does.
They should read Jane Jacobs on the Nature of Economies or the
Economy of Cities, who brilliantly describes the actual creative mechanism of
the environment. The productive “wide open
door” to recognizing it, that most everyone opts not to walk through, is
that it’s the diversity options, not the diversity of
instructions in a creative organism like a city that do
it. That sort of messes up the deterministic model, of
course, but points to a gap in our rules where things could both exit and enter.
Phil Henshaw
From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of peter
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 2:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Strogatz and Ratti video conversation
Nice one indeed , great catch Steve
But do we all realize the implications with the words - Feedback Loops -
Giant Non Linear systems ( being measured with linear systems ) - Network
theory not translating into Euclidean geometry.
I found the piece on natural laws of cities totally enlightening but
fortunately for all of us SaFeans we live in Discworld nirvana where no natural
laws apply as Owen can testify from his phenomenal research under Professor
Pratchett
( : ( : pete
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