On Fri, 5 Jan 1996, John Woods wrote:
> Willard wrote:
> >I'm hoping I don't get indigestion because I think there are some powerful
> >concepts in this book re: top/down vs. bottom/up control and the power of
> >having distributed processing with no central process control. It
> >highlights the value of having many "dumb" processors interacting
> >independently making mistakes and producing great results. When you read
> >the book, you'll get the sense that this is exactly how the free market
> >works and how organizations ultimately operate even though there maybe an
> >appearance of central control. Hmmmmmmmmm! I really don't know what I'm
> >writing about but the stuff sure is intriguing.
I haven't read Kelly's book. Based on your description, I intend to.
This is congruent with what I've been saying about the web: it's
self-organizing. Software thinkers (Fred Brooks, J. Weinberg, Tom DeMarco)
have been observing for years that the structure of software-building
teams is critically constrained by the number of communication paths that
have to exist within the team. My corollary is this: in ANY such
situation, a self-organizing group will NECESSARILY be more efficient than
an externally organized one. The latter consumes energy, simply in
maintaining its structure, which the former is able to devote instead to
"direct labor".
> I can't help but observe that this may be the so-called "invisible hand"
> of Adam Smith. The system keeps in balance because that's how the system
> works. We may also reflect that such "dumb" processors interacting is a
> metaphor that is useful in understanding the functioning of the billions
> of neurons that make up our brains... .
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
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