Viable Systems meet Complex Adaptive Systems

Both systems survive and achieve certain goals, but they do it in very different ways. Viable Systems have a recursive structure and an identity that guides its management. Complex Adaptive Systems evolve towards the solutions in a very Darwinian fashion. You choose which type of system is the system you are trying to improve or to get results. See the differences and notice how they are alike. This transfers to knowledge about organizations and the way they treat liberty and markets. The movie THE MATRIX is all about CAS and Neo an emergent property or mutation of the software that the Architect cannot debug.

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Science & Technology

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• adaptive
• complexity
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• THE
• MATRIX
• Neo
• Trinity

[smarimc]

Great overview of this important distinction. The CAS vs VSM diagram was a major win.

The Matrix stuff was a bit weird though ;)

[JAVIERLIVAS]

THE MATRIX is all about CAS, happening all inside a computer world. Neo an emergent property of the software system that the Architect cannot debug.

[smarimc]

Ah yes. I haven't seen those for a long time. It would be fun to write a script for "The Tensor" which took the same Matrix concept into a VSM...