Patterns in the Sand

Written By Terry Bossamaier and David Green

Book Review By Gregory J. Turk

Prior to reading this book, I rarely thought about a natural process, such as the way a tree branch develops, as comparable to the way in which software code is written. Patterns in the Sand was constructed around the idea of relating how simplistic natural processes can explain complexity within nature and how we should use this understanding in the pursuit of computing efficiencies. I will highlight a few ideas from the book that I found most intriguing.

One issue brought out a few times within the book was that of central planning versus decentralized management of complex processes. This was first explained in the way that an ant colony interacts. Creatures such as ants have very minimal brain capacity yet still exhibit the ability to create huge structures, due to cooperation via signals (scents) between individuals. Centralization of all activity and interaction of separate systems within synthetic creations, such as robots, has often been very difficult. Some scientists believe and have been very successful promoting the idea that the best way to go about creating a robot is by decentralizing the “parts”.

In the latter chapters of the book, the idea of human nerve cells interacting in tandem to create a larger system, which then relates information to the brain, was discussed. Looking at populations of cells and how they act in tandem versus just looking at the firing pattern of one cell helps explain how human nervous system works efficiently. In similar ways, breaking up computer programming into separate independent tasks with defined interfaces is often the key to managing complexity in high technology systems.

Chapter 4, “The Imbalance of Nature” was one of the most interesting chapters in the book. The topic of understanding the interactions among all members of a complex system and using simulation and models to attempt to predict what is occurring in a complex system was profound. Comparing the “Starfish” epidemic overrunning the Great Barrier Reef to the way that a nuclear chain reaction sets off within an atomic bomb better allows us to understand how similar complex systems permeate within the whole of the natural world.

The idea of symmetry and regularity within natural growth processes was interesting to me. For example, the way that the branches of two completely different sets of trees will grow using the same overall rules is amazing. Moving deeper into the regularity phenomena the authors begin an excellent discussion of fractals. Another underlying theme of this book is that fractals are often thought of as very complex systems buy can easily be explained through simple generating rules.

Overall, this book seemed to have much more content relating to nature than to computing. Comparing natural processes to those of the computing world should continue to be used as a reference point.