yBC.tv's video: Dr Peter Cochrane: From a world of simplicity to a world of complexity

Okay, we can classify systems into three groups; the simple, the complicated and the complex. The simple would be something like a light switch or a push button that makes a bell ring, we can easily understand it, but complex would be something like a jet engine, or a rocket or a telecommunications system. Both of those kinds of systems we can design top down, what do we want the end result to be and we go and we design it right down to the minutiae who build it. The complexity bit is about things that we cannot design top down they evolve bottom up, so life is a good example, artificial intelligence is a good example and so are a lot of adaptive systems that we now make, so the internet is a good example of complexity, you could not design the internet top down to get a given behavior, it actually is built as a framework with rules and then the behaviors are emergent, they are impossible to predict and impossible to control. That’s the world of complexity in which we now live. Dr Peter Cochrane, CEO & Chairman, Cochrane Associates Interview via CSC's Leading Edge Forum https://leadingedgeforum.com/