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CONTROL

                      December 19, 2002

In praise of Kevin Kelly's
book "Out of Control" (1995)

Okay, maybe you wince at Kevin Kelly's
name these days...  who could blame
you?  There's that embarassing "Long
Boom" article, and the rotgut vodka
ads that he did...

Does he have any credibility left at all?

   But turn your mind back before those
   days, and for the moment pretend you
   don't reflexively flush anything
   associated with "Wired" magazine.
   Take a look at his writings
   published back in the pre-dotty days           NATURAL_PROBLEM
   of 1994: "Out of Control".


There's a lot of good stuff here about
evolved systems (as opposed to designed
ones).  Lots of interesting pop-science
writing about ecological research,              A celtic-knot is used
software, communications, networks, and         as bullet-point
so on... all on the general theme of            through-out the book,
emergent order, self-organization.              an elegant symbol of
                                                an organic networked
                                                whole.

Just one bit: Chapter 20 "The                       There is one quirk
Butterfly Sleeps" focuses on                        of this book that
some work of Stuart Kauffman,                       gives me pause:
looking at the adaptability of
a network as a function of a                        The application of
connectivity parameter.  His                        these ideas to
result is that adaptability                         economics seems
peaks at an optimum amount of                       obvious, but it's
interconnection: it's weak                          barely mentioned in
both for poorly connected                           the text.
systems *and* for highly
connected ones.                                         Where's the libertarian
                                                        free market polemic
                                                        to go with the rest
    "Kauffman's Law states that above a certain         of it?
    point, increasing richness of connections
    between agents freezes adaptation.  Nothing            Charitable thought:
    gets done because too many actions hinge on            he figured the book
    too many other contradictory actions.  In              was too long as is.
    the landscape metaphor, ultra-connectance
    produces ultra-ruggedness, making any move             Uncharitable (?):
    a likely fall off a peak of adaptation into            He was trying to
    a valley of nonadaption.  Another way of               be subversive.
    putting it, too many agents have a say in              He wanted to get
    each other's work, and bureaucratic rigor              the old Whole
    mortis sets in.  Adaptability conks out                Earth crowd
    into gridlock.  For a contemporary culture             excited about the
    primed to the virtues of connecting up,                idea of ecological
    this low ceiling of connectivity comes as              emergent systems
    unexpected news."  p. 400                              without revealing
                                                           at first that
                                                           it undercut their
   "We own the technology to connect                       lefty prejudices.
   everyone to everyone, but those of
   us who have tried living that way
   are finding that we are
   disconnecting to get anything               CONNECTIVITY
   done."     p. 401
                                                       BRIDGES


               Now take another look at those
               cell-phone zombies, eyes glazed
               over, grinning idiotically with a
               phone glued to their ear.


                                                    NEUTRAL


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