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[Simulchaord-discuss] The world on a screen


From: Paul Fernhout
Subject: [Simulchaord-discuss] The world on a screen
Date: Wed Apr 10 09:27:08 2002

In the interest of making this list at first a useful resource for
pointers as to what organizational simualtions already exist or are
being developed, this is a first such example.

Here is a link to a new interview in the Atlantic with Jonathan Rauch on
"Artificial Societies":
 
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-03-29.htm

>From the page:

Jonathan Rauch, the author of "Seeing Around Corners," talks about what
the study of artificial societies has to tell us about the real world

Katie Bacon (interviewer) writes: 

"What the creators of artificial societies have learned
is that even by setting just a few simple rules for how
human beings interact, they can create "societies" of
great complexity—ones that in many ways mirror
what's going on in the real world. These models
imply that there are certain patterns into which
human beings unconsciously arrange
themselves—and the models help to identify what
those patterns are. A-societies, of course, will not be
able to tell us exactly when the next genocide will
happen, or precisely when the next crime wave will
crest. But, as Rauch points out, they may help us
realize the sorts of targeted interventions that would
be most effective."

...

Jonathan Rauch says at the end of the interview:

"I've come to have much greater respect for the notion
of society as an independent actor in human life. I've
come to be much more suspicious of the notion that if
I think I have good intuition about people, that I then
have good intuitions about public policies and
society. I have come to understand in a way I didn't
before that it's possible at the same time for societies
to be both more surprising and more orderly than I
ever thought. To me a lot of what this kind of thinking
has done is set out a third, unexplored continent
between determinism and randomness, where in fact
there are patterns in life and in society that we may
now have a shot at finding. And to me, that's a real
eye-opener."

Note Jonathan Rauch's mention at the end of the "unexplored continent
between determinism and randomness" which we might call chaordic
processes.

-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software 
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com



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