The Other Cellular networks

[TOM Merilahti]

by Richard Stanley

Who directs the internet?...

Watch a large flock of birds in flight in the city. It is a liquid mass of self-propelling feathers. The flock swoops, dives and turns on mark, before setlling en masse on another roof. Who gives the orders? Which ex-dinosaur says "Turn right at the plane tree, lads". Nobody. A flock of birds has no leader. A shoal of fish have no leader. A colony of ants has no leader (though as the planet's most succesful species, they do have core values).

Who directs your brain's hundred billion neurons to connect up? Who indeed, directs the internet? No-one. These are all Self Organizing Systems - SOS.

And, SOS is the new way to look at business structures. Can systems work with only Indians and no Cowboys?

Love thy neighbour

How does a tree grow? Each cell in the tree "knows" what to do according to what its neighbours do. How does a cell "know"? Cells exchange chemical messages - biochemical SMS. That's all a cell knows. The entire universe of a cell is it's neighbours. A cell certainly does not know that it is making a beautiful thing - a tree, nor can any cell say "OK lads, left hand down on twig #17960B".

Interestingly, most religions have as their central tenet 'Do unto thy neighbour, as thou would have done unto thee'. Or other 16th century words to that effect.

Simple rules

Very simle rules guide flocks, shoals and colonies. The latest A-Life simulations produce highly complex behaviour from a handful of code lines.
It's a new way of looking at systems, even business systems, because it has been previously thought that only specialisation can bring about such system complexity.

The Generation Game

Like the game of Go, chess, or even football, just a few legal moves can bring endless peruations. It seems to be a central parameter of the evolutionary process - throw up some new complexity with each generation and let the best adapted survive.

[Aarni Heiskanen]

About birds... Just remembered this study: A flock of 25 birds in V formation can fly as much as 70% further than a solo bird using the same amount of energy.

[TOM Merilahti]

What a great methapor also thinking about virtual organisations as self-organising systems / traditional organisations.