Journal on Policy and Complex Systems
robots and genetic material travels to a new planet . The children who grow up there create an entirely new society with new expectations ( mainly of a giftbased economy ). When people from Earth arrive years later , the new generation has shed its progenitors ’ worldviews . Hogan ( 1999b ) says the idea for the book came from a conversation about the conflicts in Northern Ireland . He thought that only by separating children from their parents might deep prejudices be unlearned . Thankfully , peace came to Northern Ireland without such drastic measures , but his point — that big changes need time to sink in — may apply here .
Getting Ready
What can we do if we are not
content to leave complexity to the next generation ? How can we make use of complexity theory without distorting its discoveries into safer but less useful versions ? I can think of three things we can do .
1 . Spend more time with complexity . Complex patterns emerge where interaction meets iteration . Independent ( or semi-independent ) entities interact at a local level , without central direction . Those interactions repeat over time , in the sense that an interaction at time t affects the state of an entity at time t + 1 , which in turn affects the next interaction . Emergent patterns arise from the relationships among entities and interactions .
Now stop for a moment and think of a recent time when you saw entities interacting locally and without central direction . You might find it difficult . Central direction , of laws and designs and deadlines , is an inescapable part of our modern lives . Still , we can find situations in which the balance between organization and self-organization is tipped to the side of complexity , if we look for them .
There are many ways to seek out complexity . Sit in a public park and watch people mill around . Walk in the same forest every week and watch trees interact . Set up a fish tank . Put aside a portion of your garden and let nature take its course . Watch patterns of buying and selling on the stock market ; the spread of infectious diseases ; rumors on the Internet . Play a game in which players interact with each other but not with any centralized authority . Find Conway ’ s Game of Life on the Internet and play with it . Choose an activity outside your normal sphere of attention , because it can be hardest to see complexity where you are used to asserting control . If you are a doctor , for example , you could study complexity in the spread of diseases ; but you will get farther if you look elsewhere first , then return with a new perspective .
In any of these situations , pay attention to local interactions and to states affected by them . When A jostled B ' s elbow , how did B react ? How did C react ? What did A do next ? Look for patterns that surprise you . See if you can figure out how they happened . The more time you spend with complexity , the more you will develop a sense of how it works and what it means .
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