On Thursday we discussed The Moment of Complexity, Ch. 1: From Grid to Network by Mark C. Taylor. Taylor is trying to explain how society has gone from a grid format to a network format. He also explains the difference between chaos and complexity. To understand the change from grid to network we first need to understand chaos and complexity and then how these two concepts work in grids and networks.
Chaos is things blown up into unrecognizable forms. It is the butterfly effect of small changes producing effects not specific to their cause, it is chaotic. Complexity is self-organizing because it has more order than chaos. An example would be the formation of an ant hill. There are ants running around, pursuing their own path and direction, and then as they start to make connections with each other they come together. Eventually, together, they start to make the ant hill and a community. They are self-organized because through the connections they made with each other they were able to come together and achieve the same goal, make a home.
Furthermore, grids are like walls where networks are like webs. An example would be the “transition from the Cold War system to network culture.” The Cold war system was established to simplify “complex relations and situations in terms of a grid with clear and precise oppositions.” With this system the grid, with its structure, provided security. However, “grids offer no protection from spreading the web; as the webs grow, walls collapse and begin to change.” So as society changes and becomes more of a network culture the grid formats collapse, as this change accelerates, it brings “everything to the edge of chaos. This is the moment of complexity.” The moment of complexity is understood as “the shift from a world structured by grids to a world organized like networks.” It is the moment where “self-organizing systems emerge to create new patterns of coherence and structures of relation.” To me this means that without the “moment of complexity” society can’t change from grid formats to network formats.
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So I agree with you on many points on the reading but I think there was still something unesettling with his argument. Lets say we have a business which we can say is complex that someone is starting to create. Now, this complex network doesn't work well and crashes real quick, is it a complex or chaotic system? Things seem to have been pretty orderly but the complexity or chaotic characteristics of it didn't allow it to funtion. The grid and the web layout that you drew from the reading does explain that there is still a lot of grey area and that we can't put everything in this grid.
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