Bak's Sand Pile

Bak's Sand Pile
Author: Theodore Gyle Lewis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2011-02-28
Genre: Emergency management
ISBN: 9780983074502

Did the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, the massive power blackout of 2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Gulf oil spill of 2010 'just happen'-or were these shattering events foreseeable? Do such calamities in fact follow a predictable pattern? Can we plan for the unforeseen by thinking about the unthinkable?Ted Lewis explains the pattern of catastrophes and their underlying cause. In a provocative tour of a volatile world, he guides the reader through mega-fires, fragile power grids, mismanaged telecommunication systems, global terrorist movements, migrating viruses, volatile markets and Internet storms. Modern societies want to avert catastrophes, but the drive to make things faster, cheaper, and more efficient leads to self-organized criticality-the condition of systems on the verge of disaster. This is a double-edged sword. Everything from biological evolution to political revolution is driven by some collapse, calamity or crisis. To avoid annihilation but allow for progress, we must change the ways in which we understand the patterns and manage systems. Bak's Sand Pile explains how.

How Nature Works

How Nature Works
Author: Per Bak
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2013-11-11
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1475754264

Self-organized criticality, the spontaneous development of systems to a critical state, is the first general theory of complex systems with a firm mathematical basis. This theory describes how many seemingly desperate aspects of the world, from stock market crashes to mass extinctions, avalanches to solar flares, all share a set of simple, easily described properties. "...a'must read'...Bak writes with such ease and lucidity, and his ideas are so intriguing...essential reading for those interested in complex systems...it will reward a sufficiently skeptical reader." -NATURE "...presents the theory (self-organized criticality) in a form easily absorbed by the non-mathematically inclined reader." -BOSTON BOOK REVIEW "I picture Bak as a kind of scientific musketeer; flamboyant, touchy, full of swagger and ready to join every fray... His book is written with panache. The style is brisk, the content stimulating. I recommend it as a bracing experience." -NEW SCIENTIST

Network Science

Network Science
Author: Ted G. Lewis
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2011-09-20
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1118211014

A comprehensive look at the emerging science of networks Network science helps you design faster, more resilient communication networks; revise infrastructure systems such as electrical power grids, telecommunications networks, and airline routes; model market dynamics; understand synchronization in biological systems; and analyze social interactions among people. This is the first book to take a comprehensive look at this emerging science. It examines the various kinds of networks (regular, random, small-world, influence, scale-free, and social) and applies network processes and behaviors to emergence, epidemics, synchrony, and risk. The book's uniqueness lies in its integration of concepts across computer science, biology, physics, social network analysis, economics, and marketing. The book is divided into easy-to-understand topical chapters and the presentation is augmented with clear illustrations, problems and answers, examples, applications, tutorials, and a discussion of related Java software. Chapters cover: Origins Graphs Regular Networks Random Networks Small-World Networks Scale-Free Networks Emergence Epidemics Synchrony Influence Networks Vulnerability Net Gain Biology This book offers a new understanding and interpretation of the field of network science. It is an indispensable resource for researchers, professionals, and technicians in engineering, computing, and biology. It also serves as a valuable textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in related fields of study.

Complexity

Complexity
Author: M. Mitchell Waldrop
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 150405914X

“If you liked Chaos, you’ll love Complexity. Waldrop creates the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year” (The Washington Post). In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell—and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. This book is their story—the story of how they have tried to forge what they like to call the science of the twenty-first century. “Lucidly shows physicists, biologists, computer scientists and economists swapping metaphors and reveling in the sense that epochal discoveries are just around the corner . . . [Waldrop] has a special talent for relaying the exhilaration of moments of intellectual insight.” —The New York Times Book Review “Where I enjoyed the book was when it dove into the actual question of complexity, talking about complex systems in economics, biology, genetics, computer modeling, and so on. Snippets of rare beauty here and there almost took your breath away.” —Medium “[Waldrop] provides a good grounding of what may indeed be the first flowering of a new science.” —Publishers Weekly

Natural Security

Natural Security
Author: Raphael D. Sagarin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2008-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0520253477

Written with the aim of breaking down barriers between disparate disciplines in order to create more responsive and effective strategies, Natural Security provides a new lens through which to explore the ancient and ever present problem of how to maintain security in an unpredictable, complex, and dangerous world."--BOOK JACKET.

Book of Extremes

Book of Extremes
Author: Ted G. Lewis
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2014-05-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319069268

What makes the 21st century different from the 20th century? This century is the century of extremes -- political, economic, social, and global black-swan events happening with increasing frequency and severity. Book of Extremes is a tour of the current reality as seen through the lens of complexity theory – the only theory capable of explaining why the Arab Spring happened and why it will happen again; why social networks in the virtual world behave like flashmobs in the physical world; why financial bubbles blow up in our faces and will grow and burst again; why the rich get richer and will continue to get richer regardless of governmental policies; why the future of economic wealth and national power lies in comparative advantage and global trade; why natural disasters will continue to get bigger and happen more frequently; and why the Internet – invented by the US -- is headed for a global monopoly controlled by a non-US corporation. It is also about the extreme innovations and heroic innovators yet to be discovered and recognized over the next 100 years.Complexity theory combines the predictable with the unpredictable. It assumes a nonlinear world of long-tailed distributions instead of the classical linear world of normal distributions. In the complex 21st century, almost nothing is linear or normal. Instead, the world is highly connected, conditional, nonlinear, fractal, and punctuated. Life in the 21st century is a long-tailed random walk – Levy walks -- through extreme events of unprecedented impact. It is an exciting time to be alive.

The Friction-Free Economy

The Friction-Free Economy
Author: Ted Lewis
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1997-09-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780887308475

Imagine a world where supply no longer equals demand. A world where a company craving greater market share gives away its most valuable product -- and generates millions of dollars. A world where the company that boasts the greatest chunk of consumer demand experiences even more demand; where the antagonistic relationship between buyer and seller has been replaced with a cooperative, knowledge-based exchange; where companies in every industry think like futurists, personalize products and services regardless of cost, target individuals rather than blanket the masses, and renovate old products instead of just creating new ones.

Critical Infrastructure Protection in Homeland Security

Critical Infrastructure Protection in Homeland Security
Author: Ted G. Lewis
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2006-03-31
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0471789534

A scientific approach to the new field of critical infrastructure protection This book offers a unique scientific approach to the new field of critical infrastructure protection: it uses network theory, optimization theory, and simulation software to analyze and understand how infrastructure sectors evolve, where they are vulnerable, and how they can best be protected. The author demonstrates that infrastructure sectors as diverse as water, power, energy, telecommunications, and the Internet have remarkably similar structures. This observation leads to a rigorous approach to vulnerability analysis in all of these sectors. The analyst can then decide the best way to allocate limited funds to minimize risk, regardless of industry sector. The key question addressed in this timely book is: What should be protected and how? The author proposes that the answer lies in allocating a nation's scarce resources to the most critical components of each infra-structure--the so-called critical nodes. Using network theory as a foundation, readers learn how to identifya small handful of critical nodes and then allocate resources to reduce or eliminate risk across the entire sector. A comprehensive set of electronic media is provided on a CD-ROM in the back of the book that supports in-class and self-tutored instruction. Students can copy these professionally produced audio-video lectures onto a PC (Microsoft Windows(r) and Apple Macintosh(r) compatible) for repeated viewing at their own pace. Another unique feature of the book is the open-source software for demonstrating concepts and streamlining the math needed for vulnerability analysis. Updates, as well as a discussion forum, are available from www.CHDS.us. This book is essential for all corporate, government agency, and military professionals tasked with assessingvulnerability and developing and implementing protection systems. In addition, the book is recommended for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students studying national security, computing, and other disciplines where infrastructure security is an issue.

Ubiquity

Ubiquity
Author: Mark Buchanan
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2002-04-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0609504320

Critically acclaimed science journalist, Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world, which explains why catastrophes-- both natural and human-- happen. Scientists have recently discovered a new law of nature and its footprints are virtually everywhere-- in the spread of forest fires, mass extinctions, traffic jams, earthquakes, stock-market fluctuations, the rise and fall of nations, and even trends in fashion, music and art. Wherever we look, the world is modelled on a simple template: like a steep pile of sand, it is poised on the brink of instability, with avalanches-- in events, ideas or whatever-- following a universal pattern of change. This remarkable discovery heralds what Mark Buchanan calls the new science of 'ubiquity', a science whose secret lies in the stuff of the everyday world. Combining literary flair with scientific rigour, this enthralling book documents the coming revolution by telling the story of the researchers' exploration of the law, their ingenious work and unexpected insights. Buchanan reveals that we are witnessing the emergence of an extraordinarily powerful new field of science that will help us comprehend the bewildering and unruly rhythms that dominate our lives and may even lead to a true science of the dynamics of human culture and history.