Dear At, you wrote:
>Think of the Operating System (OS) as the substrate and Application
>Software (AS) as the emergent. Actually, the AS emerges through the
>mental work of the programmer and not through the OS itself. But the
>programmer has to take the OS as substrate into consideration. While
>programming the AS, the programmer discover some short comings in the
>OS. Thus the programmer asks the programmer of the OS to make up
>these short comings in a new version of it.
But the AS based on OS old version should be applicable also with the new
version, restricting the possibilities to improve OS.
Another example from traffic: It is neutral whether one drives on the
right or left side, but once a decision is made and implemented, it
becomes very difficult to switch later. The same is true for the decision
which kind of motor to be used in motor cars, which kind of atomic power
stations to build etc. Such decisions affect the knowledge that is going
to be created in future and available expertise - a systemic loop is
activated, that stabilises the made decision and suppresses all
alternatives. From physics and chaos theory I know the term "breaking of
symmetry" for such dynamics.
I am wondering, how such bifurcations of the symmetry breaking type, where
only one order out of two (or more) equally possible orders emerge by
chance correspond with the more fundamental emergence - immergence
bifurcation? And also, how does the irreversibility, caused by such
symmetry breaking, relate to the irreversibility due to entropy
production? Do we have to distinguish two types of bifurcations and
irreversibilities?
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>