The SmartS Club

You want to know why a single ant is not even a nuisance, while a whole bunch of them gets your attention and a vast number finally builds a complex society? Need an explanation how those few synapses you use to navigate yourself through a bar-conversation becomes a conscious something by sheer numbers? Ever tortured that brain with the question how to overthrow THE world financial system? Emergence is the answer. Emergence develops to the catch-phrase of the occupy-movement as well as the mantra of some proponents of the network-first!-cooperators. Increase the number of actors (cells, fish, occupiers, collaborators…) and something awesome will happen. How? It will emerge! The basic idea is good, the concept, however, not really understood. Emergence does not deal with the self-organized creation of something awesome. Emergence at its very roots describes the upscaling of complexity by increasing the number of participants. Thereby the 'language' necessary to describe the sy

The fascination of complexity is one big force that drives curiosity. It appears that the mind is getting utterly excited when a sensoric impression is neither completely predictable, symmetric or repetitive nor random. Pure symmetry and repeated patterns might sooth the aching brain - but boredom is not far away. Complete randomness, on the other hand, is quickly masked as 'background' or noise, unable to keep our attention for too long - equally rapidly discarded from our attention-span. It is the broken symmetry on the one side (the nearly perfect crystal-structure, the flaw in a symmetric image, the spot in a beautiful face...) and the structured randomness (seemingly repetitive patterns in the noise, almost symmetrical structures in an otherwise random system) that catches the attention of artists and scientists alike. Both, it appears, are looking for tools or 'languages' to extend the space of what is describable, in this sense understandable, and to build somet

At a wonderful summer night I was lying in the grass, my little son beside me. We were staring into the dark sky, debating infinity, other planets, the origin of everything, observing falling stars that were whizzing through the atmosphere at a delightfully high rate. Why did we see so many of them that night? What are falling stars? What are comets. Why do comets return and when? The air was clear and warm. No artificial lights anywhere. The moon was lingering lazy in the trees across the river. Some fireflies were having a good time, switching their glow on and off rather randomly - in one group they seemed to synchronize but then it was random again. It reappeared: a few bugs were flashing simultaneously at first ... it started to expand, it was getting more. A whole cloud of insects was flashing in tune. Are they doing this on purpose? Do they have a will to turn the light on and off? How do those fireflies communicate? And why? Do they communicate at all? My son pointed at a fie

Of course we are impressed by increasing click-rates, see our vanity pumped by your mails and indulge in being mentioned in relevant blog-lists. But we'd feel utterly flattered if you flattr us using the well-placed buttons on this page or other... (and please excuse this selfish propaganda)