This is a summary of Marshall McLuhan's work applied to understanding the past, present and future. It covers - the medium is the message, the medium as content, hot and cool media, our change from a pre-literate to literate to post literate society, characteristics of the post literate society, and the four laws of media. It will close with a discussion of the wave of the future.
The benefits of understanding this approach are that you:
• Will understand why our present environment is the way that it is
• Gain a greater understanding of the interrelationships of past, present and future.
• Will understand the influence of media on our perception, thinking and actions
• Will gain insight on the long term future.
Paul Schumann is a practicing futurist with expertise in creativity and innovation. He has lived long enough to see forecasts fail and succeed, including some of his own. He had a thirty year career with IBM in three very different arenas - as a technologist and technology manager in semiconductor technology, as an internal entrepreneur creating the first independent business unit within IBM, and as a cultural change agent developing a more creative and innovative culture. Since retiring from IBM he has 19 years of experience in consulting as a business futurist with programs in creativity and innovation. He is the founding president of the Central Texas Chapter of the World Future Society. And he is the founder of the Insights – Intelligence - Innovation Collaborative . He is on the advisory boards of the Marketing Research Association and the Austin Center for Nonprofit and community Based Organizations.
Introduction: The Medium Is the Massage
McLuhan on the information age:
McLuhan's Wake: National Film Board of Canada
McLuhan's Wake: Introduction
Web 2.0 (The Machine is Us/ing Us)
References
The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, Marshall McLuhan, Beacon Press, 1951
The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan, University of Toronto Press, 1962
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshal McLuhan (McGraw-Hill: 1964; MIT Press: 1994)
The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel, 1967
“The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan”, Playboy, 1969
Four Causes of Reality, William Crews, Philosophical Library, 1969
Culture is Our Business, Marshall McLuhan, Ballantine Books, 1972
Media: The Second God, Tony Schwartz, Random House, 1981
The Alphabet Effect, Robert Logan, William Morrow & Co., 1986
Laws of Media: The New Science, Marshal and Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto Press, 1988
The Global Village, Marshall McLuhan & Bruce Powers, Oxford University Press, 1989
Essential McLuhan, Edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, Basic Books, 1995
The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, Marshall McLuhan, edited by Eric McLuhan & Jacek Szklarek, Stoddart, 1999
Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, Paul Levinson, Routledge, 1999
“McLuhan’s Wake”, National Film Board of Canada (video), 2002
“The Wave of the Future: From Four Causes to Four Laws or McLuhan Re...”, Paul Schumann, 2005,
Other Resources
The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca
The Media Ecology Association, http://www.media-ecology.org/
A Model Media Ecologist, Bob Blechman, http://robertkblechman.blogspot.com/
McLuhan & Mailer, video, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5470443898801103219&sou...
The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan Audio, http://www.ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html
Marshal McLuhan, the Man and his Message, CBC Archives, http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainemnt/media/topics/342/
The Official Site of Marshall McLuhan, http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/
Marshall McLuhan, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
Digital Ethnography, Michael Wesch, Kansas State University, http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/
Numerous McLuhan Videos on YouTube
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Why are so unhappy?
Why are you so unhappy?
Because 99% of what you think,
And everything you do,
Is for yourself,
And there isn't one.
Wu Wei Wu
Because 99% of what you think,
And everything you do,
Is for yourself,
And there isn't one.
Wu Wei Wu
Friday, October 9, 2009
Income and Asset of the US (1989 - 2004)
I've been curious about the distribution of personal income and assets in the US. I found a data source at the Federal Reserve Board. However, it's masses of data and complicated spreadsheets. I've been trying to approach the problem as I ordinarily do, with mathematics. But, my experience has been that while I understand the math, few people I ever show it to grasp the real significance. Then yesterday I discovered a great tool and wondered if it would be useful for this application.
The tool was developed by Hans Rosling and is described in the video above and web site. Joyfully, a simple version of the tool is available in Google Gadgets (Motion Chart). it took me awhile to figure out how to use it, but I was rewarded with an interesting visual. It can be viewed here.
If you click on the play button, the data will flow with time. The different colors represent different percentile ranges of income for the US.
What do you see in the data?
What data would you like to see analyzed this way?
How could you use the tool?
The tool was developed by Hans Rosling and is described in the video above and web site. Joyfully, a simple version of the tool is available in Google Gadgets (Motion Chart). it took me awhile to figure out how to use it, but I was rewarded with an interesting visual. It can be viewed here.
If you click on the play button, the data will flow with time. The different colors represent different percentile ranges of income for the US.
What do you see in the data?
What data would you like to see analyzed this way?
How could you use the tool?
A Morning Twitter Poem
A Morning Twitter Poem*
Morning house silence,
Pre paper-on-the-driveway thud,
Or even the comforting clacking
Of the automatic coffee maker turning itself on.
Our evolution,
Path toward peace:
The power of a moral character.
The second great depression.
What else is there that I can enjoy right now?
Collecting stories and their visual display.
A way for what?
Running down the road,
Trying to loosen my load.
I've got stupid questions on my mind.
Me add gentle.
Wishing every day was a holiday.
Wondering about this whole Twitter thing.
It's weird when you realize,
You don't really know anyone,
That goes to your old high school anymore.
It's going to be a longgggg day.
So what is true and
What is not is
What I think about.
Will need help with that.
Let's see...
I need more coffee.
* All these statements were abstracted from this morning's twitter.
Morning house silence,
Pre paper-on-the-driveway thud,
Or even the comforting clacking
Of the automatic coffee maker turning itself on.
Our evolution,
Path toward peace:
The power of a moral character.
The second great depression.
What else is there that I can enjoy right now?
Collecting stories and their visual display.
A way for what?
Running down the road,
Trying to loosen my load.
I've got stupid questions on my mind.
Me add gentle.
Wishing every day was a holiday.
Wondering about this whole Twitter thing.
It's weird when you realize,
You don't really know anyone,
That goes to your old high school anymore.
It's going to be a longgggg day.
So what is true and
What is not is
What I think about.
Will need help with that.
Let's see...
I need more coffee.
* All these statements were abstracted from this morning's twitter.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Simplexity
This book is subtitled “Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple.”
To me the use of the word complexity in the title and most of book is misleading. Most of the time the author is writing about what I would call complicated systems. Complicated systems do not have the distinctive characteristics of complex systems such as emergence or randomness. Furthermore, a complex system cannot be made simple. Humans are quite often fooled by complexity and make assumptions that result in simple solutions, often with disastrous consequences. However, dealing with complicated systems is still daunting. And, I really liked his many examples and his analysis that many of the complicated systems we deal with are results of our own design.
However, the book is still an interesting read, and he does offer some insights into how to change complicated systems into simpler ones.
One of the sticky points for me in using better design to make products less complicated is that would require much more complete knowledge of what customers want. And, as most markets are complex, achieving that degree of certainty will be impossible. A real conundrum.
Simplexity, Jeffrey Kluger, Hyperion, 2008, 150p
To me the use of the word complexity in the title and most of book is misleading. Most of the time the author is writing about what I would call complicated systems. Complicated systems do not have the distinctive characteristics of complex systems such as emergence or randomness. Furthermore, a complex system cannot be made simple. Humans are quite often fooled by complexity and make assumptions that result in simple solutions, often with disastrous consequences. However, dealing with complicated systems is still daunting. And, I really liked his many examples and his analysis that many of the complicated systems we deal with are results of our own design.
However, the book is still an interesting read, and he does offer some insights into how to change complicated systems into simpler ones.
One of the sticky points for me in using better design to make products less complicated is that would require much more complete knowledge of what customers want. And, as most markets are complex, achieving that degree of certainty will be impossible. A real conundrum.
Simplexity, Jeffrey Kluger, Hyperion, 2008, 150p
The Tao of Chaos
“Tao is a concept found in Taoism, Confucianism, and more generally in ancient Chinese philosophy. While the character itself translates as 'way', 'path', or 'route', or sometimes more loosely as 'doctrine' or 'principle', it is used philosophically to signify the fundamental or true nature of the world. The concept of Tao differs from Western ontology, however; it is an active and holistic conception of the world, rather than a static, atomistic one.” - Wikipedia
Katya Walter has written an interesting and insightful book linking the concepts of chaos to the double helix of genetics to the I Ching of ancient Chinese culture. Along the way she provides some of the best explanations of chaos and fractals I've read.
She begins her journey with a section called Beyond Linear Limits that I'm going to quote from extensively:
“Late one Saturday afternoon in Austin, Texas, I faced a showdown between my left and right brains. Shoot-out time. It was June 8, 1985, and it happened at the East-West Center when Diana Latham urged me to try the I Ching, just once. So reluctantly, I did ... with a lackadaisical and dubious query. But the response bowled me over! It was devastatingly appropriate-and poetic. Sheer chance, of course.
But when I tried it again later out of curiosity, it worked again. Moreover, the old Chinese oracle's answer again touched some deep chord in me that logic alone didn't reach. A response to wisdom, a welcoming hosanna of "Yes, that's it!"
I was confronted with the notion that this absurd old oracle might actually work, odd as that seemed to my logical mind. Irrational. So strange in fact that I ignored it for awhile. I could not admit the possibility ... so it chewed just underneath. After all, I was modern savvy, educated past superstition. A Ph.D. teaching at the University of Texas. Wasn't I? Logic shot the I Ching..down. Didn't it?
But I couldn't quite dismiss it. How in heaven's name could that abstract and ancient oracle mesh in such an amazing way with the events in my own modernday life? Rationality said, "Impossible Chance! Gullibility!"
But the simple fact remained: it had told me apt wisdom, pointed and calm, like a grandparent whispering in my ear. So I decided to explore in rational terms if such a thing might possibly be.”
Later in that section, she goes on to explain the I Ching:
“But I have slowly learned that the I Ching reveals the pattern. Not the specifics of an event, but its underlying pattern. It works through the dynamics of chaos theory, which can predict a trend without specifying its exact details. Discovering this huge hidden intelligence that rests deep in the weave of nature, even learning to communicate with it, can be disconcerting, frightening .. , until it becomes wonderful.
The discovery reveals a deeper truth beyond the limits of what we call normal reality. It exhibits an underlying coherent pattern in the dynamic chaos of nature itself. More eerily, it exhibits a tappable caring that's nestled in the very fabric of spacetine-mattergy, This huge pattern knits the Cosmos together in physics and metaphysics. It unites the objective and the subjective, the quantitative and qualitative, the alpha and omega. Its vast dynamic shapes us, body and soul.
But even now, despite extensive experience, I still understand why people fear such a possibility lurking beyond the sensory reality. What is this strange domain of power? It sounds rather like superstitious enslavement to some bogey of the imagination…and that is worthy of fear.
Fear is a reasonable response, It sees the psychic loss in giving oneself up to superstition and voodoo rites, in relinquishing personal power to brutal gods with canny, greedy priests, to wizards, healers, or gurus only too willing to manipulate their followers if given a chance, It fears an abandonment into destructive and orgiastic fantasy, a letting-go of choices, a precipitous lapsing away from logic to become lost in the enchantment of the deep. The descent looks too dangerous into the primal power of raw archetypes. It seems the epitome of romantic release to Dionysius, where one fears and yet follows a blind pull into the passionate unknown.
In here is an emotional powerhouse. In here, people "lose control" and argue or rape or fall blindly in love or seek the grail. They kill others in holy war or devote the rest of a short lifetime to the cure of AIDS or become inspired to paint a masterpiece. Moments or years later, a person can say bemusedly, "I don't know what came over me," or "Something possessed me," or "I felt driven!" or "The devil made me do it," or "I followed my bliss and it has blessed me."
This mysterious domain is not logical. It has it own reasons that reason does not know. To quote a bewildered Woody Allen, "The heart wants what it wants." But a passionate vision can so easily lead to bitter disillusion, to mob violence, to some idiosyncratic utopia where a demagogue-religious or social or political-holds sway and demands blind faith of spellbound followers who do battle for the cause. Some cause. It can idealize a saint or a demagogue to follow, fix upon some vile enemy to conquer, so that half of its huge polarized energy is projected away into the outer world to become wooed or defeated, driving us without free will.
Yet there is also fear of no passion. Cool Apollonian logic can survey this universe with a despairing sense that it is caught in some limitless, endless, mindless design that also leaves no room for free will. Sartre showed us the architecture of this existential prison with no exit from a godless hell of cold linear logic. It locks us into a gray, chilly, basement whose flat expanse of pointless concrete data cannot conceal the futile bones buried beneath. Here is dead-end living,
Both extremes - passionate romantic or cool logician - reveal a paucity of perspective in the West for more than 2,500 years. It has split us into romantic versus classic, liberal versus conservative, left versus right, heart versus head. But it is possible to encompass both poles within a larger, transcendental third stance. This paradigm is cradled in chaos theory, that amazing new science of the 20th century. It reveals the I Ching is a model of chaos patterning in microcosm. It even connects science to spirit.”
She tells of the loss of spiritual depth in our society to the rise of drugs. “ …habituating drugs can only offer a road away from, not to. The escape into addiction is triggered by our search for psychic release from the data-mad mire of ordinary life.”
Walters discusses the difficulty of comprehending the Tao.
“Laotse opens his Tao Te Ching this way: 'The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao.'”
And, she summarizes her way through this enigma. “By discovering that the I Ching is merely a spiritual version of DNA, and both of them are merely subprograms of a deeper, even universal order called complementary chaos. For the scientific mind, this allows the security of an explanation. For the mystical soul, it opens an endless vista on wordless beauty charged with transcendent connection.”
In an article written by Katya Walter reprinted in Future Positive in 2004, she explained the concept of patterned chaos:
“My book Tao of Chaos discusses in detail the ability of both DNA and the I Ching to combine fractal analog and binary functions. It is based on modern chaos theory, which can predict a trend without specifying its exact details. Chaos patterning is determined because it can predict an overall pattern, but also chaotic because it cannot specify any exact point of its next manifestation. The mathematician can determine its general form but not the exact contents. Patterned chaos has its own special signature:
• Order in the midst of apparent disorder.
• Cycling that repeats with continual slight variation.
• Scaling that fits one level into another like nesting boxes
• Universal applicability. “
This an extremely import concept for it allows her to connect patterned chaos to fractal geometry.
Patterned chaos is also linking many disciplines together.
“The universal import of this odd new science is even tending to heal the ever-dividing rift of disciplines that fragmented the past centuries into splinter groups specializing ever more narrowly in describing more and more about less and less. But now cardiac specialists stockbrokers, psychologists, and turbulence physicists can all meet in joint conference on chaos patterning. A recent conference held in Florida sponsored papers on chaos patterns in physiology, biophysics, gestalt psychology, chemical systems, mathematics, physics, communication theory and linguistics. Such unity within diversity was unheard of not so long ago. Here indeed is interdisciplinary reunion. Patterned chaos can find shared meaning in areas as wide-ranging as plasma physics, genetic coding, perceptual psychology, coffee prices, weather reports, the body's living ductwork of blood vessels, airways, and nerve impulses.”
The author then spends several chapters relating patterned chaos to fractal geometry, which provides much needed insight into the application of the new geometry to the science of chaos.
One of the other powerful concepts in this book is the concept of complementary chaos (or co-chaos, sometimes cochaos).
xn+1 = rxn(1-xn),
where n is the iteration number and r is a constant. Repeated application of this equation produces the complicated graph below (Wikipedia)
You can observe the digital doubling effect by looking at the branches: 1, 2, 4 and 8. But, beyond that, the logistic map becomes “random”. At eight branches, called period 3, the state of the logistics map is very close to wild fluctuations.
Complementary chaos results from the counterpoise of two period 3 systems. Walters uses this model to draw analogies with the double helix genetic code and the I Ching.
I am not in any position to verify these assertions. But the theory offers a tantalizing hint of a unification of East and West, and the unification of several sciences in the Western tradition.
In any case, I'll close with the advice of Buddha:
"Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence." - Buddha
The Tao of Chaos
Katya Walter
Kairos Center, 1994, 287 p
You can find more information about Katya Walter and her work on her web site, The Double Bubble Universe
Katya Walter has written an interesting and insightful book linking the concepts of chaos to the double helix of genetics to the I Ching of ancient Chinese culture. Along the way she provides some of the best explanations of chaos and fractals I've read.
She begins her journey with a section called Beyond Linear Limits that I'm going to quote from extensively:
“Late one Saturday afternoon in Austin, Texas, I faced a showdown between my left and right brains. Shoot-out time. It was June 8, 1985, and it happened at the East-West Center when Diana Latham urged me to try the I Ching, just once. So reluctantly, I did ... with a lackadaisical and dubious query. But the response bowled me over! It was devastatingly appropriate-and poetic. Sheer chance, of course.
But when I tried it again later out of curiosity, it worked again. Moreover, the old Chinese oracle's answer again touched some deep chord in me that logic alone didn't reach. A response to wisdom, a welcoming hosanna of "Yes, that's it!"
I was confronted with the notion that this absurd old oracle might actually work, odd as that seemed to my logical mind. Irrational. So strange in fact that I ignored it for awhile. I could not admit the possibility ... so it chewed just underneath. After all, I was modern savvy, educated past superstition. A Ph.D. teaching at the University of Texas. Wasn't I? Logic shot the I Ching..down. Didn't it?
But I couldn't quite dismiss it. How in heaven's name could that abstract and ancient oracle mesh in such an amazing way with the events in my own modernday life? Rationality said, "Impossible Chance! Gullibility!"
But the simple fact remained: it had told me apt wisdom, pointed and calm, like a grandparent whispering in my ear. So I decided to explore in rational terms if such a thing might possibly be.”
Later in that section, she goes on to explain the I Ching:
“But I have slowly learned that the I Ching reveals the pattern. Not the specifics of an event, but its underlying pattern. It works through the dynamics of chaos theory, which can predict a trend without specifying its exact details. Discovering this huge hidden intelligence that rests deep in the weave of nature, even learning to communicate with it, can be disconcerting, frightening .. , until it becomes wonderful.
The discovery reveals a deeper truth beyond the limits of what we call normal reality. It exhibits an underlying coherent pattern in the dynamic chaos of nature itself. More eerily, it exhibits a tappable caring that's nestled in the very fabric of spacetine-mattergy, This huge pattern knits the Cosmos together in physics and metaphysics. It unites the objective and the subjective, the quantitative and qualitative, the alpha and omega. Its vast dynamic shapes us, body and soul.
But even now, despite extensive experience, I still understand why people fear such a possibility lurking beyond the sensory reality. What is this strange domain of power? It sounds rather like superstitious enslavement to some bogey of the imagination…and that is worthy of fear.
Fear is a reasonable response, It sees the psychic loss in giving oneself up to superstition and voodoo rites, in relinquishing personal power to brutal gods with canny, greedy priests, to wizards, healers, or gurus only too willing to manipulate their followers if given a chance, It fears an abandonment into destructive and orgiastic fantasy, a letting-go of choices, a precipitous lapsing away from logic to become lost in the enchantment of the deep. The descent looks too dangerous into the primal power of raw archetypes. It seems the epitome of romantic release to Dionysius, where one fears and yet follows a blind pull into the passionate unknown.
In here is an emotional powerhouse. In here, people "lose control" and argue or rape or fall blindly in love or seek the grail. They kill others in holy war or devote the rest of a short lifetime to the cure of AIDS or become inspired to paint a masterpiece. Moments or years later, a person can say bemusedly, "I don't know what came over me," or "Something possessed me," or "I felt driven!" or "The devil made me do it," or "I followed my bliss and it has blessed me."
This mysterious domain is not logical. It has it own reasons that reason does not know. To quote a bewildered Woody Allen, "The heart wants what it wants." But a passionate vision can so easily lead to bitter disillusion, to mob violence, to some idiosyncratic utopia where a demagogue-religious or social or political-holds sway and demands blind faith of spellbound followers who do battle for the cause. Some cause. It can idealize a saint or a demagogue to follow, fix upon some vile enemy to conquer, so that half of its huge polarized energy is projected away into the outer world to become wooed or defeated, driving us without free will.
Yet there is also fear of no passion. Cool Apollonian logic can survey this universe with a despairing sense that it is caught in some limitless, endless, mindless design that also leaves no room for free will. Sartre showed us the architecture of this existential prison with no exit from a godless hell of cold linear logic. It locks us into a gray, chilly, basement whose flat expanse of pointless concrete data cannot conceal the futile bones buried beneath. Here is dead-end living,
Both extremes - passionate romantic or cool logician - reveal a paucity of perspective in the West for more than 2,500 years. It has split us into romantic versus classic, liberal versus conservative, left versus right, heart versus head. But it is possible to encompass both poles within a larger, transcendental third stance. This paradigm is cradled in chaos theory, that amazing new science of the 20th century. It reveals the I Ching is a model of chaos patterning in microcosm. It even connects science to spirit.”
She tells of the loss of spiritual depth in our society to the rise of drugs. “ …habituating drugs can only offer a road away from, not to. The escape into addiction is triggered by our search for psychic release from the data-mad mire of ordinary life.”
Walters discusses the difficulty of comprehending the Tao.
“Laotse opens his Tao Te Ching this way: 'The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao.'”
And, she summarizes her way through this enigma. “By discovering that the I Ching is merely a spiritual version of DNA, and both of them are merely subprograms of a deeper, even universal order called complementary chaos. For the scientific mind, this allows the security of an explanation. For the mystical soul, it opens an endless vista on wordless beauty charged with transcendent connection.”
In an article written by Katya Walter reprinted in Future Positive in 2004, she explained the concept of patterned chaos:
“My book Tao of Chaos discusses in detail the ability of both DNA and the I Ching to combine fractal analog and binary functions. It is based on modern chaos theory, which can predict a trend without specifying its exact details. Chaos patterning is determined because it can predict an overall pattern, but also chaotic because it cannot specify any exact point of its next manifestation. The mathematician can determine its general form but not the exact contents. Patterned chaos has its own special signature:
• Order in the midst of apparent disorder.
• Cycling that repeats with continual slight variation.
• Scaling that fits one level into another like nesting boxes
• Universal applicability. “
This an extremely import concept for it allows her to connect patterned chaos to fractal geometry.
Patterned chaos is also linking many disciplines together.
“The universal import of this odd new science is even tending to heal the ever-dividing rift of disciplines that fragmented the past centuries into splinter groups specializing ever more narrowly in describing more and more about less and less. But now cardiac specialists stockbrokers, psychologists, and turbulence physicists can all meet in joint conference on chaos patterning. A recent conference held in Florida sponsored papers on chaos patterns in physiology, biophysics, gestalt psychology, chemical systems, mathematics, physics, communication theory and linguistics. Such unity within diversity was unheard of not so long ago. Here indeed is interdisciplinary reunion. Patterned chaos can find shared meaning in areas as wide-ranging as plasma physics, genetic coding, perceptual psychology, coffee prices, weather reports, the body's living ductwork of blood vessels, airways, and nerve impulses.”
The author then spends several chapters relating patterned chaos to fractal geometry, which provides much needed insight into the application of the new geometry to the science of chaos.
One of the other powerful concepts in this book is the concept of complementary chaos (or co-chaos, sometimes cochaos).
We are all probably familiar with digital doubling: 20 = 1, 21 = 2, 22 = 4, 23 = 8, etc. Fewer people are probably less familiar with analog doubling in an example like the logistic map. The logistic map is the result of repeated application of the rather simple looking logistic function:
xn+1 = rxn(1-xn),
where n is the iteration number and r is a constant. Repeated application of this equation produces the complicated graph below (Wikipedia)
You can observe the digital doubling effect by looking at the branches: 1, 2, 4 and 8. But, beyond that, the logistic map becomes “random”. At eight branches, called period 3, the state of the logistics map is very close to wild fluctuations.
Complementary chaos results from the counterpoise of two period 3 systems. Walters uses this model to draw analogies with the double helix genetic code and the I Ching.
I am not in any position to verify these assertions. But the theory offers a tantalizing hint of a unification of East and West, and the unification of several sciences in the Western tradition.
In any case, I'll close with the advice of Buddha:
"Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence." - Buddha
The Tao of Chaos
Katya Walter
Kairos Center, 1994, 287 p
You can find more information about Katya Walter and her work on her web site, The Double Bubble Universe
Complexity: A Guided Tour
This is an excellent book to study if you are just beginning to read about complexity and are interested in the application of the science of complexity to artificial and real life. Melanie Mitchell is well qualified to teach us about this field as she has been connected with Santa Fe Institute since 1989, five years after it was founded. The book is well written, easy to read and follows impeccable logic.
The book begins with a quote from Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach, “Reductionism is the most natural thing in the world to grasp. It's simply the belief that 'a whole can be understood completely if you understand its parts, and the nature of their sum.' No one her left brain could reject reductionism.” In complexity reductionism doesn't apply. You can't understand a complex system as a sum of its parts. It can only be understood as a gestalt.
“How is it that those systems in nature we call complex and adaptive-brains, insect colonies, the immune system, cells, the global economy, biological evolution-produce such complex and adaptive behavior from underlying, simple rules? How can interdependent yet self-interested organisms come together to cooperate on solving problems that affect their survival as a whole? And are there any general principles or laws that apply to such phenomena? Can life, intelligence, and adaptation be seen as mechanistic and computational? If so, could we build truly intelligent and living machines? And if we could, would we want to?
I have learned that as the lines between disciplines begin to blur, the content of scientific discourse also gets fuzzier. People in the field of complex systems talk about many vague and imprecise notions such as spontaneous order, self-organization, and emergence (as well as "complexity" itself).”
The author describes the following properties of complex adaptive systems:
“When looked at in detail, these various systems are quite different, but viewed at an abstract level they have some intriguing properties in common:
Complex collective behavior
Signaling and information processing: All these systems produce and use information and signals from both their internal and external environments.
Adaptation: All these systems adapt-that is, change their behavior to improve their chances of survival or success-through learning or evolutionary processes.”
She follows this with two versions of a definition of a complex system:
1. “A system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaption via learning or evolution”
2. “A system that exhibits nontrivial emergent and self organizing behavior”
She adds the comment that some people apply these concepts only to adaptive complex systems, but that she does not. Which is unfortunate because her definition limits complexity essentially to living systems, leaving out many non adaptive complex systems generally accepted as examples of complexity. But, her book is limited to a train of thought that leads to artificial and real life, and she stays almost consistent with that view.
She also reports that there are no agreed measurements of complexity.
With this review of the development and state of complexity science in general, the author then launches into the logical development of the history and state of artificial life:
• Life and evolution in computers
• Computation writ large
• Network thinking
• The past and future of the sciences of complexity
“…how did life originate in the first place? And what exactly constitutes being alive? As you can imagine, both questions are highly contentious in the scientific world, and no one yet has definitive answers. Although I do not address the first question here, there has been some fascinating research on it in the complex systems community.
The second question-what is life, exactly?-has been on the minds of people probably for as long as "people" have existed. There is still no good agreement among either scientists or the general public on the definition of life. Questions such as "When does life begin?" or "What form could life take on other planets?" are still the subject of lively, and sometimes vitriolic, debate.
The idea of creating artificial life is also very old, going back at least two millennia to legends of the Golem and of Ovid's Pygmalion, continuing in the nineteenth-century story of Frankenstein's monster, all the way to the present era of movies such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, and computer games such as "Sim Life."
These works of fiction both presage and celebrate anew, technological version of the "What is life?" question: Is it possible for computers or robots to be considered "alive"? This question links the previously separate topics of computation and of life and evolution.”
This book is not an easy read, but it's worth the effort. The author has done an outstanding job of writing about the science of complexity in a way that facilitates understanding.
Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell, Oxford University Press, 2009, 349 p
The book begins with a quote from Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach, “Reductionism is the most natural thing in the world to grasp. It's simply the belief that 'a whole can be understood completely if you understand its parts, and the nature of their sum.' No one her left brain could reject reductionism.” In complexity reductionism doesn't apply. You can't understand a complex system as a sum of its parts. It can only be understood as a gestalt.
“How is it that those systems in nature we call complex and adaptive-brains, insect colonies, the immune system, cells, the global economy, biological evolution-produce such complex and adaptive behavior from underlying, simple rules? How can interdependent yet self-interested organisms come together to cooperate on solving problems that affect their survival as a whole? And are there any general principles or laws that apply to such phenomena? Can life, intelligence, and adaptation be seen as mechanistic and computational? If so, could we build truly intelligent and living machines? And if we could, would we want to?
I have learned that as the lines between disciplines begin to blur, the content of scientific discourse also gets fuzzier. People in the field of complex systems talk about many vague and imprecise notions such as spontaneous order, self-organization, and emergence (as well as "complexity" itself).”
The author describes the following properties of complex adaptive systems:
“When looked at in detail, these various systems are quite different, but viewed at an abstract level they have some intriguing properties in common:
Complex collective behavior
Signaling and information processing: All these systems produce and use information and signals from both their internal and external environments.
Adaptation: All these systems adapt-that is, change their behavior to improve their chances of survival or success-through learning or evolutionary processes.”
She follows this with two versions of a definition of a complex system:
1. “A system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaption via learning or evolution”
2. “A system that exhibits nontrivial emergent and self organizing behavior”
She adds the comment that some people apply these concepts only to adaptive complex systems, but that she does not. Which is unfortunate because her definition limits complexity essentially to living systems, leaving out many non adaptive complex systems generally accepted as examples of complexity. But, her book is limited to a train of thought that leads to artificial and real life, and she stays almost consistent with that view.
She also reports that there are no agreed measurements of complexity.
With this review of the development and state of complexity science in general, the author then launches into the logical development of the history and state of artificial life:
• Life and evolution in computers
• Computation writ large
• Network thinking
• The past and future of the sciences of complexity
“…how did life originate in the first place? And what exactly constitutes being alive? As you can imagine, both questions are highly contentious in the scientific world, and no one yet has definitive answers. Although I do not address the first question here, there has been some fascinating research on it in the complex systems community.
The second question-what is life, exactly?-has been on the minds of people probably for as long as "people" have existed. There is still no good agreement among either scientists or the general public on the definition of life. Questions such as "When does life begin?" or "What form could life take on other planets?" are still the subject of lively, and sometimes vitriolic, debate.
The idea of creating artificial life is also very old, going back at least two millennia to legends of the Golem and of Ovid's Pygmalion, continuing in the nineteenth-century story of Frankenstein's monster, all the way to the present era of movies such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, and computer games such as "Sim Life."
These works of fiction both presage and celebrate anew, technological version of the "What is life?" question: Is it possible for computers or robots to be considered "alive"? This question links the previously separate topics of computation and of life and evolution.”
This book is not an easy read, but it's worth the effort. The author has done an outstanding job of writing about the science of complexity in a way that facilitates understanding.
Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell, Oxford University Press, 2009, 349 p
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