(This is Part 3 of a series. Go back to Part 2.)
A beehive is a very good example of a complex adaptive system (CAS). There is no one in control, or to put it another way, the hive itself is in control.
It used to be thought that the queen bee was giving orders or controlling things, but that's now been proven false; rather, she is solely occupied with birthing the larva that turn into worker bees.
Like other complex adaptive systems, the beehive is a self-organizing system, and the hive's direction arises from the interactions of thousands of much simpler units, in this case individual bees.
For instance, when it's time for the hive to move, bee scouts go out looking for appropriate places. (At whose direction? Believe it or not, no one is directing it.)
Each scout comes back and does a dance indicating its enthusiasm about a proposed new home. Depending on the degree of excitement, a certain number of other bees go check it out. And so on with other prospective sites.
As the other bees come back, they also do dances indicating their relative degree of enthusiasm for a given site. The site that garners the most number of bees dancing enthusiastically is the one that wins out. It's a form of simple-minded democracy, actually, yet it's directed by no one.
Soon the hive gathers in a swarm just outside of its old home, and then as an eerie organism, gathers speed and travels, at eye level, to its new home. Again, who directs this? No one does. Or we could say that the hive itself does.
It was first proposed by Wheeler in 1913 that a beehive is actually an organism in its own right—an animal fully as alive in its own way as an antelope or a tiger. This is now relatively accepted among biologists. In fact, antelopes and tigers are themselves examples of complex adaptive systems.
Among theoreticians and scientists, the line is blurring between "life" on the one hand and "complex adaptive systems" on the other. It is now seen that anthills and termite colonies are organisms in their own right, but the concept goes still further.
For instance, the food system that magically fills up the grocery shelves at night is a CAS. Every day one third of the food on grocery shelves is bought and disappears. Fleets of farmers, trucks, distributors, wholesalers, clerks and so on coordinate their efforts to fill the shelves back up again. Who is in charge of this system? Nobody. It's a self-organizing system in charge of itself.
Indeed, there are some who would go so far as to call the magical food system a form of life—just a different form than the ones we're used to. But like other forms of life, it organizes itself, it resists perturbations (for instance, if damaged by severe storms and floods it reorganizes itself), and is even capable of reproducing itself (as when a food-system "colony" forms in a new territory based on the old system).
Other examples of CAS organisms are cities, the economy, and cellular automata on computers.
The mathematician John Von Neuman proved some time ago that cellular automata could in theory reproduce themselves. Such self-reproduction has now been observed. The fact that this "life" is occurring on certain massively parallel computers does not alter the notion, among leading theoreticians, that a form of life is taking place.
Such virtual organisms satisfy all the general criteria for life. For example, they persist in time until something causes their "death." They are dissipative structures as defined by Prigogine in general systems theory; that is, their continuing organization depends on a constant flow of energy through them. They strongly resist outside perturbations; yet if the perturbation is large enough they can become damaged or cease to exist. And they self-reproduce themselves.
As outlined in Part One and Part Two, the challenge of bringing together specialized digital CAS's to form a more general intelligence (what we call "common sense") will be successfully accomplished within at most a few decades. Much work has already been accomplished in this direction, and that work is accelerating.
Beyond a certain point, organisms of deep digital general intelligence will begin to surpass that of human beings in their intelligence, and will continue to accelerate from there because alien intelligence is evolving at a rate billions of times faster than nature.
When general intelligence units, or GIU's, far surpass human beings they will, as looked at previously, become the dominant species. The history of earth is replete with examples of even slight evolutionary advantage conferring dominance.
At that point "we'll just pull the plug," we say. But we won't be able to, because the very functioning of human society will have become totally dependent on alien intelligence. Why? For the very same reason that we adopt the latest computers and software now—to stay competitive and viable in the economy, to extend our reach further in doing things we want to do.
And of course the general net (or internet, or GN) is itself a complex adaptive system, one that is evolving at a furious rate. When it "wakes up" we will not necessarily even know that it happened, since it will take place at a level far beyond our comprehension. Indeed, it could already have happened; there is no way for us to know. And that GN organism will be alive—or already is—just as a beehive is alive.
The implications of all this are staggering. What it strongly implies is that this very time right now is the Golden Age of human beings, and will be looked back upon as such in future times.
With all its imperfections and tragedies, this time now is still a Golden Age far surpassing the golden ages of classical Greece and the Renaissance.
Just look: We are experiencing unprecedented advances in science and technology, just as classical Greece was reaping the revolutionary effects of the invention of writing, and the Renaissance was reaping the revolutionary effects of the invention of the printing press. And just as the Industrial Revolution created engines capable of multiplying our muscles, so now we are creating computer engines capable of multiplying our mental power—and this process is accelerating.
Just as the Renaissance did, and classical Greece before it, we have produced and are producing incredible works of art. If you doubt that, look at just one area—film—and consider such masterpieces as 8 1/2 by Fellini, The Seventh Seal by Bergman, Lawrence of Arabia by Lean, Kagamusha by Kurosawa, and many others.
Most importantly, we are still the dominant species. We are still occupying that niche, and it affects our psyche tremendously. Though we're multiplying our numbers and polluting the earth at a tremendous rate, the chickens haven't really come home to roost yet: It is not yet clear that our very existence is threatened, though that will become crystal clear a little further down the road.
No, we're still in a time when we can argue whether global warming actually exists or not. We still have plenty of petroleum, though the peak of world production by even the most generous estimates is only a couple of decades away. Our miracle antibiotics still work, though they're weakening tremendously through overuse.
Much of the world is in relative political freedom. Most of us can speak our mind most of the time; that is a rarity in human history. We have access to many different spiritual paths, another rarity. We have access to tremendous amounts of information about almost any subject; broad access to information has been relatively rare during most of human history.
When we read the paper or turn on the news and lose sight of the larger context, it can seem like nonsense to say it: But nevertheless, with all of its flaws, this is the time. This is it right now, the Golden Age of human beings.
Can we appreciate it while we're living through it? Can we appreciate it while it's still here? Can we appreciate that we're living through the Golden Age as we go about our daily life today? Can we be grateful for the incredible gifts that we have right now?
—jim sloman, 6/17/01 for Jun 17
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