Complexity Revisited
By B, The Honest Sorcerer
Only after accepting that there are hard limits has humanity a chance to change course and adopt to a drastically changing landscape. Whether we can do that, is question to be pondered…
Tag: complexity
Complexity and Armageddon, or… the Story of the Hemp Microphone (Episode 38 of Crazy Town)
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
Society has become so complex that all the complexity begets more complexity. And if that’s not complex enough for you, jobs have become so specialized that hardly anyone knows how anything is made or works.
A Brief History of Systems Science, Chaos and Complexity
By Daniel Christian Wahl, P2P Foundation Blog
On the one hand I believe it is vital to accept uncertainty, not-knowing, and unpredictability fully to the point of deep humility. On the other hand, I also believe that we need to choose to act from the conviction that we can design for positive emergence in complex systems even if it is not an exact science and we cannot know with certainty how our efforts will turn out to affect transformative change.
Connectivity becomes too dangerous: Putting manual security back into the grid
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
The U.S. Senate passed a bill last week that would form a government-industry working group to "examine ways to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies, like manual procedures controlled by human operators." ... If we truly want long-term solutions to the problems that vex us in our increasingly high-tech society, then we will have to look elsewhere than the technologists.
A Science of Qualities: Experiencing the World Coming into Being & Living on the Edge of chaos
By Daniel Christian Wahl, Medium
The Science of Qualities is really an extension of conventional science in the sense that it depends upon consensus, agreement and a methodology whereby people come to recognize the agreement or the consensus they have about the qualities of experience of other beings.
The Future of Economics: From Complexity to Commons
By Paul B. Hartzog, P2P Foundation
Complexity science shows us not only what to do, but also how to do it: build shared infrastructure, improve information flow, enable rapid innovation, encourage participation, support diversity and citizen empowerment.
The Systems View of Life – A Unifying Vision
By James Alexander Arnfinsen, Fritjof Capra, Levevei
Interview with Fritjof Capra author of The Tao of Physics (1975) and co-author of the Systems View of Life – A Unifying Vision (2014).
The Law of Diminishing Returns
By Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
Is modern society hitting our defining moment, the point of diminishing returns?
Unsustainable Farming: From Bird Droppings to Corporate Agriculture
By Roger Boyd, Humanity's Test
The discovery of new lands to exploit, and new energy sources, helped reinforce the notion that human societies can always find a way around limitations upon its growth.
Hair of the dog, or, the limits of technology
By Mary Odum, A Prosperous Way Down
This post is about the hopeful idea that technology is going to save us from having to adapt to descent. A recent article describes an episode of geopiracy to geoengineer the ocean, so we're back at climate again, since this example provides particular insights and illustrations into our blindspots about the limits to growth and the limits of technology.