Organic Computing and Complex Dynamical Systems – Conceptual Foundations and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Summary

Complex computing systems begin to overwhelm the capacities of software developers and administrators. Self-organization has been a successful strategy of evolution to handle the increasing complexity of organisms with the emergence of novel structures and behavior. Thus, self-organization and emergence are fundamental concepts of organic computing. But these concepts are often used in a more or less intuitive manner. In the theory of complex systems and nonlinear dynamics, self-organization and emergence can be mathematically defined. Actually, these concepts are independent of biological applications, but universal features of dynamical systems. We get an interdisciplinary framework to understand self-organizing complex systems and to ask for applications in organic computing. In technology, the emergence of order and structures displays desired and undesired synergetic effects. Thus, controlled emergence is a challenge of computational systems simulating self-organizing organic systems of evolution. The question arises how far can we go in simulating high dimensional complex systems and avoiding uncontrolled risks.