Tipping Points
Chapter I - Reorganize the social network.
“It’s best if I show you”
Tiffany pushed off the bent roots that constituted an organic bench and gestured towards the Atrium. The lead coordinator of the Institute of in situ Resource Utilization - The Institute for short - continued:
“The Atrium sits at the center of our campus and, I believe , is a symbol of what we do here.“
The journalist from the Chronicle, Brennan, scanned the Atrium with more care than when he had first arrived where freshly harvested fruits had captured his attention. The Atrium had an elliptical shape of at least 100 paces in length and 60 in width, to Brennan’s best estimate, with at its center a circular opening of a dozen paces. The focus on the center space was reinforced by the manner in which the vegetation had been placed. The outer layers of the Atrium bore large oak like trees. Their branches had been interlaced and, in some places, had fused together creating a natural wall and load bearing structures from which the surrounding buildings spanned. A gradient from robust oaks and tall pines decreased to smaller fruit bearing trees and bushes to finally taper off into grasses and land covering plants. The soft sunlight filtering through the foliage lent an ethereal aspect to the many paths meandering between clearings. Some were empty. Others were occupied by groups of people sitting on the ground or on seats crafted from the living matter.
“It is really something to behold.” commented Brennan pensively.
Tiffany walked towards the center of the elliptical opening and continued.
“What you see around us is the result of years, decades even, of work. We have attempted to create a stable system that exists in a state of resilience to perturbation. The configuration of the vegetation, the selection of the species, the way that each grove is connected stems from a conscious design process to increase the resilience of this microcosm. We have focused on modularity and heterogeneity to ensure that if stress were to be placed on this system, it would have a greater adaptive capacity. Local losses in some areas of the Atrium would be compensated by other areas and nodes. It is mostly symbolic of course. The scale of the Atrium is too limited to truly notice the effects of the design. ”
“A fight against change. Isn’t there and old book which suggest that change is the only constant or something along those lines?” interjected Brennan.
“Indeed, there is. Although we don’t have a river to bath ourselves in. Maybe a better way of phrasing this would be to say: we are attempting to make a system that changes at a rate we can predict and will allow us to adapt to this change. Nearly everything we do at the Institute is to enhance the resilience of the systems we live in. Ecological. Climatic. Social. Economical. Urban. You name it.”
“Isn’t the full name of the Institute, The Institute of in situ Resource Utilization? How does this play into that view?
“Great question. When the Institute was founded, we focused on creating system resiliency by maximizing the use of the resources that were available to us on site. Now, we have greatly expanded that notion but the concept of systems permeates everything we do. Nearly all the food we consume here was produced on campus with parts produced right here in the Atrium.” Tiffany pointed towards the grove where a dozen or so people were still aggregating to obtain a peach.
“Ah, Yes. They were quite something! So what does it mean to have a “systems” view of things?” asked Brennan.
“In our case, systems thinking considers the world as a whole rather than a collection of independent parts. It assumes that everything is connected in one form or another to form a complex system. We apply this notion to our research, development, and design. ” replied Tiffany.
“That sounds awfully complicated, no pun intended” chuckled Brennan. Tiffany replied with a smile and a slight twitch at the side of her mouth. Brennan narrowed his eyes.
“Not a good pun?” he asked.
“No I get it.” Tiffany paused. “It’s just that some have argued that there is a difference between complicated and complex systems and so, in this case, the pun is inaccurate”
“Oh…” Brennan was unsure how to proceed from here. Thankfully for him, Tiffany continued:
“A simple system is well… simple. It has few moving parts and is easy to understand. That swing for example” said Tiffany pointing at a simple wooden plank hung beneath the branch of a nearby Elm tree.
“It’s a simple collection of items and we can easily predict its behavior. You push the swing. It moves. Simple. A complicated system has lot more moving parts. It is more difficult to understand. Your watch, is it a mechanical one?” She pointed at Brennans wrist which he lifted in response.
“That is a complicated system. A lot of moving parts all interacting with each other but it is fully deterministic. Each part follows specific rules and does one thing. More difficult to understand what is going on but eventually you would get it.”
“Right and a complex system would have many moving part but we would not be able to understand it?” asked Brennan.
“In a way, yes. There are also many interconnected elements that all play off each other and interact in dynamic and often unpredictable ways. This leads to emergent properties of the system. Things that go beyond the characteristics of the elements that composes that system. The rules that govern each element, or agent, might seem very simple but taken all together they can create unexpected behaviors. ”
“That reminds me of an article I read a few weeks ago on ants. It is fascinating how these seemingly small creatures can create such large and complex underground structures.”
“That is a great example of an emergent property. I don’t think they know what to do per se. They follow local cues - based on the pheromones they release - and the aggregate response leads to the emergence of complex behaviors and, in turn, larger structures. In fact, you can see how disrupting local stimuli can lead to death. We see this in ant mills.
“Oh those death spirals?” commented Brennan “I have seen a few of those. I remember thinking it was kind funny before knowing what it actually was. And you try to avoid death spirals, I suppose?”
Tiffany nodded.
“Our departments research and develop technologies in order to give us more resilient systems. We achieve this by attempting to interconnect many different aspects our lives. We attempt to create systemic redundancies which can replace or at least provide basic needs if one system were to collapse. The Atrium, for instance, can provide partial support for our food requirements and waste management. ” Looking at Brennan’s frown, she added:
“Don’t worry. We utilize the nutrients here but the waste is processed elsewhere. I would recommend visiting our waste facilities. It is quite something”
“That sounds… lovely” hesitated the journalist - scanning the ground as if trying to see if he had stepped into something he should not have.
“You would be surprised at how much we can get out of human waste and how many systems can be connected and feed off it.”
Brennan cleared his throat in an attempt to steer the conversation away from fecal matter.
“How can you determine if systems are resilient or not? What criteria do you use?”
“That is the question isn’t it? We could reframe this as trying to understand system tipping points and how can we can anticipate critical transitions. As you said earlier the only constant is change. Ideally, we would like to understand what leads to catastrophic change.”
“Change can be a positive sometimes” added Brennan.
“I agree. The questions remains the same. Transitioning from one state to another can also be towards an expected or a hoped-for state of the system. Social change would be a great example of this. The framework we use is the same in either case. We have to establish what makes a system fragile and susceptible to change from one state to another. Regardless of how we subjectively perceive the new state.”
“I see. And so what defines this… architecture of fragility” asked the journalist. Tiffany raised an eyebrow and smiled.
“Architecture of fragility. That is well put. We first look at the different elements of a system and how they are connected. Systems that are composed of heterogeneous and loosely connected elements tend to be more adaptable. Local losses are easily remedied by change in the system’s configuration. For instance, here.” Tiffany pointed towards the mid rim of the Atrium where a multitude of colors, shapes and textures formed a thick band of fruit bearing bushes.
“We have selected a wide variety of bushes and shrubs which do not necessarily require each other to survive. Some are anemophilic , pollinated by the wind, while others are entomophilic, pollinated by insects. Others have resistances to rusts while others have resistance to viral infections. If one node in system were to be wiped out, we would still maintain a healthy ecosystem. It would require the collapse of many elements before it would reach a critical point for us. And by the time that point is reached, we will have found solutions to mitigate or adapt to the system’s new configuration.”
“Right. If I understood correctly, the converse would be a homogenous and strongly connected system that would tend to collapse quickly since change will strongly affect the other elements. Like dominoes falling.” said Brennan
“Exactly. Stressing the system can lead to catastrophic tipping points since the system’s configuration - or architecture as you put it - cannot adapt easily. Part of our researchers focus on studying early warning signs of these tipping points.”
“What kind of signs hint towards these points, then?” asked Brennan.
“It depends on the system but one common sign, for instance, is Critical Slowing. When stress is applied to a system, the system can react and often will return to its original state. Think of a forest after a fire or a storm. The system was stressed but eventually it will return to flourish once more. However, when critical slowing occurs, the return to the normal state takes longer until it cannot recover sufficiently from the imposition of one perturbation to the imposition of another. At one point, the system just cannot handle this and collapses completely. However, it’s not easy to identify slowing events especially when considering larger time scales. In some cases, we might even mistake flickering events leading to a tipping point for the actual critical tipping point.”
“What do you mean?” enquired Brennan.
“Climatically, for instance, some regions flicker between wet and dry climates over the course of thousand of years in relatively short periods of time. They might experience drought for 10 to 20 years before returning to a wet climate for a couple hundred years. At the scale of decades, it is difficult for us to know if we are in an transitory state or if this is a tipping point. This flickering and increased variance in a system is also a way for us to anticipate tipping point imminence. We are developing models to hopefully asses and predict when tipping points will occur and what signs we should look for.”
“That is a lot to take in” said Brennan raising his eyebrows. “Something just occurred to me. You mentioned how you were connecting your… waste management system with the Atrium. Would that not lead to a more fragile system by more strongly linking the elements in the system?”
“It does seem like that but it is only one of the many sources of nutrients we use. And it is only one of the many ways we manage our black waters on campus. Each unit in our system is designed to maximize interoperability. If one breaks, you still have a dozen other systems to carry the load. And that is the key ethos of the Institute. We don’t necessarily want the big hyper efficient systems that produce the most for the least cost. Sometimes those systems are inevitable to obtain critical mass and achieve ambitious goals but that is another matter. For the most part, we want efficient, interoperable, and resilient units that will allow humanity to thrive regardless of the stress that is put on a system. If a natural disaster hits one side of the planet, the other side should not be affected. In turn, the recovery for the affected area can be accelerated by spreading stress across many resilient and adaptable units. ”
Tiffany turned towards Brennan.
“Are you familiar with the concept of 15 minutes cities?”
“Vaguely.”
“Let’s take some height.”