Principles of the Self-Organizing System

Abstract

to the purposes and motivations of the human makers of the rules. Following the Ashby "own world" formulation, a machine is not going to take a dislike to some human cultural manifestation (religion, ideology, lifestyle) in ways that perpetuate strife. AccountabilityWhere, then, is accountability when technology takes the place of functions formerly performed by human beings, or introduces functional capability that was not even possible before? Mechanisms do not have responsibility for their own actions. When technology is woven ever more tightly into the fabric of our lives, there is an accountability that includes both the creator and the installer of the technology. This linkage is not always understood as an explicit responsibility, and is a dangerous point of potential abdication of responsibility. Clarifying and making explicit the accountabilities, which are evolving at the combined rate of evolution of technology and prevailing social preferences, falls into the domain of the systems engineer. What this means is that the system practitioners are accountable for system's effects upon relevant stakeholders and sponsors. Accordingly, system practitioners must develop the methods and tools to keep increasingly autonomous and complex techno-institutional systems within acceptable envelopes of determinism. This implies an emphasis on aligning the desires of participants and beneficiaries with institutional as well as technological architectures.This leads to two main questions. First, how shall we assess whether the human-activity system that performs systems engineering ensures harmony of sponsor requirements with the rules of the intended operations context? Second, how shall we assess whether a system, when realized and activated according to the systems engineering model, will perform, associate, and evolve in accordance with the societal rules currently in force? Non-Determinism in Systems EngineeringEric D. Smith, eric.smith@incose.org T he question "What is a system?" can be asked and answered differently, but the fact that the question refers to a whole-called a "system"-remains. This article shows how a conceptual structuring by abstraction levels with complementary qualitative and quantitative aspects clarifies the nature of a system without resort to strict noncomplementary hierarchical decompositions that ignore complexity. The goal of this work is to foster a fuller cognizance of system descriptions, including model-based systems engineering (MBSE), in which complete and consistent descriptions are sought. A difficulty not currently addressed by MBSE is the inclusion of systems qualities, such as holistic, non-deterministic, and emergent, without which there can be no true description of complex systems.Complexity in mathematical formalizations can be perceived through the presence of intriguing members of mathematics, including random numbers, transcendental numbers, and imaginary numbers. Transcendental numbers, like irrational numbers, cannot be described succinctly as the quotient of two inte...

The value of collective intentionality for understanding urban self-organization

“…Self-organization refers to the evolutionary dynamics emerging out of the chaotic behavior of the elements in a system that aim to achieve equilibrium without external force (Ashby 1962;Jantsch 1980). This view on self-organization has gained recognition within the realms of social sciences, including planning (Doak and Karadimitriou 2007;Holling and Sanderson 1996;Karadimitriou 2010;Portugali 2011).…”

The role of leadership in emergent, self-organization

“…Complexity theory originally developed in the physical sciences where scientists were attempting to understand the complexity of nature, and increasingly found linear models to be ineffective in capturing the complex and emergent nature of phenomenon (Ashby, 1962;Holland, 1995;Kauffman, 1995;Prigogine, 1997). Observing that emergence and perpetual novelty exist throughout nature gave rise to the identification of common characteristics of complex adaptive systems because "in our world we discover fluctuations, bifurcations, and instabilities at all levels" (Prigogine, 1997, p. 55).…”

Identification of Induced Complexity in Product Service System Enterprises

“…As the intrinsic complexity increases, so an induced complexity is introduced (Sinclair, 2007;Read, 2008) that is very often manifested in complex organisational structures. It should be noted that induced complexity is not necessarily an undesirable characteristic, because it is necessary that a controlling system must have an appropriate level of complexity to manage the system it aims to control, as implied by Ashby"s law of requisite variety (Ashby, 1962). Nevertheless, there is a tendency for organisations to become over-complicated (i.e.…”