|
Suggested
Reading
Listed
in Order of Difficulty and Sequence
Micro Motives and Macro Behavior
Thomas C. Schelling
W.W. Norton & Company, 1978
ISBN: 0393090094
Accounts
of “tipping points” in the popular press can be traces
to Schelling’s original research into the subject. A clear
and readable treatment of mathematics of complex systems without
the mathematics! Full of mental exercises and real-life examples
that illustrate the logic of interconnected systems.
Blown to Bits : How the New Economics
of Information Transforms Strategy
Philip
Evans and Thomas S. Wurster
Harvard Business School Press,
1999
ISBN: 087584877X
Although
most reviewers focus on the notions of information “richness”
(quality of connections) and “reach” (number of connections),
the understated story of this book is how organizations can change
their processes, redefine the terms of competition and dominate
their competitors.
Vehicles : Experiments in Synthetic Psychology
Valentino
Braitenberg
MIT Press, 1986
ISBN: 0262521121
Lots
of folks a advocate autonomous robotics in warfare. Braitenberg
shows how such vehicles can be built, but also the difficulty
in engineering useful functions (I often quote his Law of Downhill
Experimentation and Uphill Analysis: it’s easier to induce
interesting behavior in complex machines than to figure out from
whence such behavior comes).
The User Illusion : Cutting Consciousness
Down to Size
Tor Norretranders, (Jonathon
Sydenham, Translator)
Viking Press, 1999
ISBN: 0140230122
Makes
me wish I could have read the Danish version in the early 1990s.
Many of the early discoveries and propositions of the complexity
community are summarized and placed in context in this very readable
(but nonetheless deep) text.
Dynamics of Complex Systems (Studies in Nonlinearity)
Yaneer
Bar-Yam
Perseus Press, 1997
ISBN: 0201557487
The
most complete reference text for the mathematics and logic of
distributed, information rich system. The inside joke: everything
you’d want to know about complex systems is contained in
the first chapter. Punchline: the first chapter is 278 pages long.
Download the Recommended Reading List>>
|
