Out Of Control: The New Biology Of Machines, Social Systems, And The Economic World

by Kevin Kelly

systems that are most adaptive are so loose they are a hairsbreadth away from being out of control. Life, then, is a system that is neither stagnant with noncommunication nor grid-locked with too much communication. Rather life is a vivi-system tuned “to the edge of chaos"—that lambda point where there is just enough information flow to make everything dangerous. Rigid systems can always do better by loosening up a bit, and turbulent systems can always improve by getting themselves a little more organized. Mitch Waldrop explains Langton’s notion in his book Complexity, thusly: if an adaptive system is not riding on the happy middle road, you would expect brute efficiency to push it toward that sweet spot. And if a system rests on the crest balanced between rigidity and chaos, then you’d expect its adaptive nature to pull it back onto the edge if it starts to drift away. “In other words,” writes Waldrop, “you’d expect learning and evolution to make the edge of chaos stable.”