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:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 1:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 Peter Baston IDEAS <http://www.ideapete.com/> www.ideapete.com 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of peter Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 2:27 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 Peter Baston IDEAS <http://www.ideapete.com/> www.ideapete.com
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