Hi Grant, and welcome to the group. I too have struggled with complex enterprise systems and have been intrigued by analogies with natural organisms, although at a very superficial level.
Recently I met up with a long lost school buddy who has spent the last 20 years in biology. I have spent the last 20 years in IT (cut to references to Herman Hesse novels involving diverging paths between the priesthood and "worldly" pursuits...whither go I?). Anyway, I mentioned something along the lines about how natural systems seemed more adept at handling complexity. My friend pointed out that natural biological processes are mostly one jury-rigged process built on another with dubious processes often being co-opted for purposes way beyond their original "intent". When I mentioned the apparent longevity if natural systems, my friend pointed out that species regularly become extinct. My friend scoffed at the idea of anything vaguely resembling "intelligent design" which I certainly don't believe in, but which I guess I had come to naively attribute to natural evolutionary processes - probably as a result of wishful thinking. So I'm intrigued by your theory. Do you, as I believed, side with a model in which natural selection leads to elegant solutions. Or is your view more aligned with my friends assertion that the natural outcome of evolution is a ramshackle expression of "good enough" for now. Does a bilogical model of complex IT systems lead to an SAP or a Google? Regards, Saul On Friday, February 26, 2010, Grant Holland <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear FRIAM... > > I'm excited and happy to subscribe to the group. (Thanks for the invite > Stephen, - and David.) For many years I have architected and implemented > large-scale (mostly Java) enterprise software (applications and systems) for > corporations and gov. institutions mostly in North America on behalf of a > number of major computer systems vendors (e.g. Sun). However, for the past > few years, my passion has turned to the question "Why is the organization and > dynamics of living systems so different from those of 'engineered' ones - and > why are their systemic properties so much more interesting?" From a practical > perspective, I hoped to improve the engineering of large-scale computing > systems from this research; but in reality I became fascinated with the > theory, and so I had to (lovingly) read lots of books and research articles. > > Anyway, to drive toward an answer to above question, I have developed a > mathematical theory of living and lifelike systems, which I call "Organic > Complex Systems". A few months ago I began to write up an overview of the > results of my research so far. I am nearing completion of that paper, and > intend to publish it on arXiv.org in a couple of months with the hope of > getting comments, and hopefully collaborators. BTW, perhaps somewhat more > descriptive of this work is the subtitle of this forthcoming paper: "A > Comprehensive Theoretical Apparatus for Modelling the Organization and > Dynamics of Living and Lifelike Systems". > > Anyway, these are my immediate interests. I'm looking forward to finding out > about yours. > > Take care, > Grant > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > -- Saul Caganoff Enterprise IT Architect Mobile: +61 410 430 809 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/scaganoff ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
