Complexity

Frequent visitors to this blog know that I got all excited about a complexity class run at MIT by the New England Complex Systems Institute over the winter break.

I just spent spring break (spring break II — a special year) in Washington, D.C., trying to understand a host of issues all at once.  Likely outcomes of the Grokster case, the telcom re-do debate, patent policy, the application of campaign finance laws to the internet, spyware, and on and on.  Everything was interesting, everything seemed connected, and the people I talked to were wonderful.

But if you really believed in and understood complexity, you'd have to think that it doesn't help to follow any of these quotidian internet policy issues.  News events don't make it possible (usually) to predict which way the world is going to go.  (This can be a very relaxing thought if you get a lot of email.) 

It may be that the best we can do is to look for areas of rigidity and, when we find them, to do our best to shake things up.  Or to work on creating systems that have lives of their own, because they keep referring back to themselves.  I've been struggling to understand Essays on Life Itself, and sometimes I think I have a faint glimmer of understanding about what life is.

At any rate, it was a fine week. 

April 30, 2005 | Filed Under main page 

Comments

One Response to “Complexity”

  1. Anonymous on April 30th, 2005 4:58 am

    Thanks for this Susan —
    The University of Liverpool is also organising a series of workshops:
    http://www.liv.ac.uk/ccr/2005_conf/subject_areas/law.htm

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