If a system, such as a plant, a building or a car, shows organization we tend to assume
that someone or something must have design in that particular order.
Self-organization is the idea that this type of global coordination can instead be the
product of local interactions.
The theory of self-organization has grown out of many different areas from computer
science to ecology and economics.
Out of these areas have emerged a core set of concepts that are designed to be applicable
to all self-organizing systems from galaxies to living cells.
But Lets start by talking a bit about Organization itself.
Organization is a highly abstract concept but we can loosely equate it to the idea of
order with its opposite being what is called entropy or disorder.
Order and entropy are typically measured by scientist in terms of information, that is
the more information it takes to describe something the more disordered the systems
is said to be.
An example of this might be a piece of metallic substance consisting of tiny magnets called
spins, each spin has an particular magnetic orientation and in general they are randomly
directed and thus cancel each other out, This disordered configuration is due to its heat
energy causing the random movements of the molecules in the material.
When we cool the material down the spins will spontaneously align them self so that they
all point in the same direction.
To describe the state of the spins in this order system would involve far less information
relative to it’s original state that requiring unique values for each randomly directed spin.
This process of magnetisation is often cited as an example of self-organization, that is
the spontaneous appearance of order or global coordination out of local level interactions.
But lets take a closer look at how this happens.
As we cooled the material down there was some area that had by chance some spins pointing
in the same direction, their alignment generated an increased magnetic force that was exerted
upon its neighbours, creating what is called an attractor state, attracting other spins
to this configuration.
Each time another spin aligned itself with this particular attractor state it augmented
the force it exerted upon other spins through what is called a positive feedback loop that
would cascade through the system until all elements were aligned within this new regime.
Another example of self-organization through positive feedback is what is called the network
effect, where the more people that use a product or service the greater its value becomes,
the telephone and Facebook are such examples becoming more useful as more users join, in
this way local connections between individuals can rapidly form into global patterns.
The network effect illustrate the positive relations or synergies between elements that
can be created when they coordinate, it is due to the presence of these synergistic relations
that the system as an entirety can become more than the sum of its parts, in a process
called emergence.
Ant colonies are a classical example given of emergence, ants governed by very simple
rules and only local interactions can through their combined activities generate colonies
that exhibit complex structures and behaviour that far exceed the intelligence or capability
of any individual ant and thus is said to have emergent properties.
Ant colonies also illustrate the decentralised structure to self-organizing system, The queen
does not tell the ants what to do, instead each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of
chemical scent exchanged with other ants, in this way organization is distributed over
the whole of the system.
All parts contribute evenly to the resulting arrangement.
As opposed to centralized structure such as most social organization that are often dependent
upon a single coordinator, this decentralized structure that is inherent to self-organized
systems gives them resiliency and robustness, as any element that is damaged can be simple
replace by any other given them hug redundancy.
Whether the self-organizing system is a social institution, a technology or eco-system for
it to sustain itself over time it must be able to with stand change and interventions
from its environment, requiring the system to be both robust to these perturbations and
capable of adapting to changes.
The generation of noise and variation within the system is a classical mechanism for achieving
this.
With out diversity a system can become ridged and develop into what is called a critical
state.
An example of self organized criticality, could be an economy who’s many industries
have developed a dependency upon petrochemical fuels, this lack of diversity of energy sources
means a small disruption in the supply of petroleum from the systems environment could
have a large global consequence.
Inversely systems with a high degree of diversity between elements will be more robust as the
variety between elements will make them more effective at absorbing change.
Eco systems are a classical example of this generating a large variety of specie that
make it capable of surviving significant changes
within it’s environment.