Re: <nettime> Managing complexity?

I have not been following this thread, so please excuse me if I repeat something already said.

Brian, I do not agree with your definition of complexity (as below) as a form of disorder coming from malfunctioning entities.

Complexity, in my view, is a natural phenomena caused by the multiple interactions that occur between different systems that collide with each other, by the fact that they operate autonomously (and not necessarily competitively) within the same body: whether it be our own, society, the world...

As an urbanist, this is certainly the case of cities. As a "simple", physical example, look at all the utility networks (water, gas, electricity, telephone, optic fibre, sewage, drainage...) operating under our pavements. They do not compete, but when one sees the same pavement being dug up over and over again, one sees the difficulty of organising their coexistence.

Joe.

Le 30 mars 2019 à 21:19, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> a écrit :

However, the surging sense of intellectual mastery brought by the phrase, "managing complexity," declines percipitously when you try to define either "management" or "complexity." The latter is vexing because the disorder comes from so many sources: faulty airplane equipment, disgruntled voters in the north of England, the harvesting of behavioral data by Internet companies, persistent trade imbalances between Germany and Southern Europe, the volatile relations of US and North Korean leaders, etc. When exactly does complexity get bloody complicated, and for whom?