Anand Chakraborty

E Business I Section B

Book Review: Patterns in the Sand

In writing the third book in a series known as the “Frontiers of Science,” Terry Bossomaier and David Green focus on making “complexity” or the study of the patterns arising from chaotic and dynamic phenomena, accessible to those with just a basic level of understanding of mathematics and the sciences. The title, Patterns in the Sand, reflects the book’s underlying themes: (1) The universe is full of seemingly chaotic or random systems (2) There is an underlying order or pattern to these phenomena, and (3) the maturity level of the sciences, society, and tools such as computers mean that dynamics and complexity will become increasingly important, not just to the scientist, but to the businessperson as well.

Patterns in the Sand begins by tracing two threads of knowledge: the natural sciences (biology, botany, ecology et al.) and the technological or inorganic sciences (physics, chemistry, computer science/mathematics). Their contention is that while the fields have developed in often-disparate ways, many of the leaps of advancement in the latter have found them more and more similar to the former. The example of computer code is clear: Code was originally written iteratively—write it on paper, prepare punched cards, submit to the computer center, receive results, debug, and begin again. The program was hierarchical, centrally controlled and procedural. The example of the Universal Turing Machine allowed computer scientists to capture the “essence” of a computer—any device that, when given an instruction stream and a data stream, manipulates those data according to those instructions and produces an output. Using this, object oriented design could be created, in which, like nature, self-similar (like a man made up of little men) programs could be built using other programs as their building blocks.

Bossomaier and Green go forward, discussing the famed “butterfly effect” (sensitivity to small changes in initial conditions for a complex system) and explaining how much of the seemingly changeless face of reality is in truth a rapidly changing complex system. Ecology or the “balance” of nature may be no balance at all, but a writhing mass of change, of which one human lifetime can capture only a small snapshot. Indeed, they discussing “emergent” properties—things that make a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Can the understanding of one patch of forest be gleaned from analyzing each of the flora and fauna separately? The authors contend that this is impossible, as there is an interaction effect.

Is this an assault upon our sciences calculated to make people throw up their hands and surrender? No, instead, Patterns turns to the tools that have been developed in the last several decades to show us means of identifying and managing complex systems—those that cannot be modeled or understood through the formulae and methods to which we are accustomed. Cellular automata or miniature parallel computers can be used to understand these reactions, as can the tools of Fourier transform—the bane of the undergraduate engineering student. So can the phenomenon of attraction. Gravity is a normal attractor—objects might be too far away from say, the Sun, or too heavy, and stay where they are. They might get sucked in, or achieve a stable orbit, such as the Earth has achieved. There is another class of attractor, the strange or chaotic attractor, than moves and shapes its pawns through the forces of complexity. The famous Lorenz attractor (which looks like a butterfly) is such an attractor. An important attractor is phase-locking, the bizarre process by which a “slaving” or dominant force causes synchronization between itself and similar entities. This is why a group of (non-electronic) clocks mounted on one wall will eventually show the same time, even if they are set apart by several minutes, or why biological phenomena, such as the menstrual cycle of young women who live together also synchronize (no explanation of joint bathroom visits is given).

How can these tools be used for business? First of all, it is important to recognize a complex system, so that simplistic plans are not used to manage it. Secondly, the phenomenon of our time, the Internet, is a complex system. It exhibits self-similarity (it is a fractal or composite of computer networks) and it has emergent properties—the “web” and the “internet” are more than the sum of their parts, more than just the computers that connect then. Thirdly, one can exploit the power of complexity. The authors point to the far-flung and tedious process of searching for information from the web as an opportunity to be exploited, as the complex system begins organizing. They also discuss means and rationale for a “cyberpunk” future—perhaps the complexity of the system will require future people to connect neurologically via cybernetic implants. Finally, Patterns in the Sand discusses evolution as a process to apply to computing and to other aspects of life. However, this only hints at the broadest lesson: break systems down into self-similar, competitive entities, which can then find the order and patterns that are inherent to them, and systems become grandly self managing.

Ratings:

Clarity: 4/5

Application: Scientific/Mathematics understanding of complexity

Content: 4/5

Overall: 4/5