Agility noted in Scientific American article (Well, sort of...)

Posted November 20th, 2006 by Rob Myers

Bits and Pieces

In the November 2006 edition of Scientific American, Stuart Kauffman has a short essay on the use of biological metaphors for economic study.

(Flashback: Remember derivatives, and "quants"? "Quants" were physicists who applied the rules of thermodynamics to financial derivatives, and made a whole lot of money for themselves and others. Of course, there were losers in that game. In fact, the laws of thermodynamics guaranteed that someone was going to lose money with every derivative transaction. This spawned a lot of talk about zero-sum games, and we almost seemed to forget that win-win games exist, too.)

Here's the part that caught my attention:

We do not yet know what makes some [biological] systems more adaptable than others, but research on complexity has yielded some clues... Too much control freezes the system into limited configurations; too little causes it to wander aimlessly. Only systems that hover on the border between order and chaos exhibit the needed general stability and capacity to explore the universe of possible solutions to challenges.

I find it most interesting that our natural human tendency to impose order on a system is contraindicated. The tendency toward anarchy is also contraindicated.

Of course, I had to make the leap from biology and economics (quite a hop right there!) to software development. But I made it, without much deliberation. I'm comfortable with that.

Are you? Let me know! Blogs are not meant to be monologues!