The decentralized mindset

Category : System Research

Decentralized Computing emerges from the understanding of self-organizing systems in nature. This model, by its implicit plurality and distributed scope, makes use of the behavioral patterns and systemic structures of micro-world organisms to facilitate communication between objects (hardware) and non-objects (software). It allows individual devices to communicate as a unified whole. For Mitchel Resnick (1994) decentralization is crucial to redrafting our images of ourselves and the larger social and environmental system we live in. The decentralized mindset allows our thinking to expand beyond sequential causality and to begin grasping the integral cybernetic layering of our worlds.

When people observe patterns and structures in the world […], they often assume centralized causes where none exist. And when people try to create patterns and structures in the world […], they often impose centralized control where none is needed.” (Resnick, 1994:120)

Unlike the centralized mindset, digitally constituted worlds are comprised of aggregate objects that share a collective behavior while individually navigating space (peer-to-peer), such as leaderless birds will flock and ant colonies will self-organize by means of pheromone transfer. According to Resnick, self-organizing systems (Resnick, 1994:14) emerge from decentralized settings wherein orderly patterns are the result of lower-level randomness (or local interactions) of individual objects and those in their contextual vicinity. The non-prescriptive or non-deterministic nature of systems accounts for the unpredictability of its micro behaviors and the larger forming structure of its collective behavior over time.

Resnick begun his investigation of the dominant centralized mindset in 1982 by questioning: “How can a mind function so effectively and creatively without anyone (or anything) in charge?” (Resnick, 1994) This led him to explore the mysterious beauty of self-organizing and emergent collective organisms and systems in the world; what he has called “massively parallel microworlds”. His research incited people into new ways of thinking of structures and patterns through experiencing the world under a very different lens. His approach took the form of digitally simulated worlds (a series of StarLogo projects) in which objects collectively self-organize by following decentralized rulesets. These use dedicated programming software and behavioral algorithms to generate virtual social objects, neighborhoods, cities, and worlds. In these micro-worlds, no one object is neither a leader nor a maker nor a seed of complex phenomena that form in their collective worlds; and the environment in which objects interact is not a passive entity, but rather is itself an actor affecting the larger structure or system.

It is more intriguing if a complex, orderly pattern arises from interactions among simple, homogeneous objects than if the same pattern arose from interactions among complex, heterogenous objects.” (Resnick, 1994:121)

Clustered interactions emerge from computationally replicating micro-world networks so as to reveal and exploit the range of possibilities present in the complex nature of our social and environmental conditioning. Simulated worlds (real or imaginary) help us rethink our collectively created social worlds and the significance of our individual actions as potentially seedless and non-causal manifestations; that is, as a decentralized system wherein individual behavior relies very much upon local interactions to produce large-scale patterns. Those patterns represent the non-causality of the emergence of self-organizing wholes which continuously fluctuate, evolve, and reorganize.

Source: Resnick, Mitchel. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds. The MIT Press, USA: 1997.

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