Simplified Complexity

Book excerpt: Change, not stability, is the constant in today's world. Massive amounts of information flow around our global system in milliseconds, breaking down the borders of nation states and shifting the balance of power among old and new players. Widely separated and disparate places around our globe communicate across electronic networks in real time, reducing the effects of distance and time. Military thinkers, politicians, scientists, and corporate executives are all looking for ways to understand the dynamics of global change and to prepare for the 21st century. Many are looking to the new science of complexity for answers. The science of complexity, however, does not yield answers, at least not in the sense that we have typically sought to describe our world and predict its events since the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. What it does yield is a new way of thinking about the world.