Final Essay and Final Thoughts #emergence

When I started this course, the first question I asked myself was: what is emergence? Going back to the first concepts we saw in class, I realized that, in fact, everything that was shown to us can be related to emergence and systems thinking, which I can understand better now. 

Thinking about emergence and the idea that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”, that these parts interact as a network, makes me think about the basic concept of systems thinking and that everything is connected, that systems are everywhere. That this device I’m using to type my text is somehow connected to a whole process of fabrication, and also can lead to a whole series of situations. 

I also learned terms that I had never encountered before: ecoliteracy, anthropocene, panopticon, etc. There are a lot, but those ones were the ones that stuck with me. And all of them are connected to the systems thinking concept. Ecoliteracy means ecological network: a model used to describe the different elements in an ecosystem and the network of relations between them. Anthropocene is a term used to label the current epoch in which we are living, the commencement of significant human impact on the earth’s geology and ecosystems: meaning how human’s activities have been having an impact on other systems, because they are part of one themselves. Panopticon was the one that fascinated me the most because of how we could connect it with the social media part. 

Panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed in the late 18th century, that allows all inmated of an institution to be observed by a single watchmen without the inmated being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. For me, this is the definition of the internet. We are being watched, and sometimes we don’t even know we are being watched. The internet is a dangerous place, and when we talked about AI in class and how it was an enormous part of our lives right now, it made me scared, but it also made me aware. 

I feel scared about how AI occupies most of our lives nowadays; our phones, in schools, universities, work. It is everywhere and it is impossible to run from it. When we are born, our parents usually have phones or live in houses full of technology, so we are exposed to this world since little age, and we don’t hold the power to be free of it, at least not completely, which is extremely scaring. 

I remember that in one class, someone told a story about how there was an experiment done about the internet: a artificial intelligence spent some hours (or minutes, I can’t recall) analyzing everything on the internet to create a personality to represent the internet. The result was a depressed boy or something like that, which made me think of how diseases like depression and anxiety have been occupying a way more important place in life than before. Since our generation basically doesn’t know how to live without technology, consequences have been showing up.

I talked about how these concepts made me scared, but I guess I also need to talk of how it also made me aware. Aware of our current situation of observation, aware with how I expose myself, but also aware of the things around me, of how everything is somehow connected and how that also has to do with me, because I am also part of the system. And what I learned with this class is that to be part of the system, I need to understand it so I can take the best things out of it. What goes around me has an impact on my day-to-day existence, and my actions are continually affecting whatever is around me. It is a bidirectional look. 

All of that means that we are not alone, we are always part of a context, or we are always in dialogues with other entities. I guess that we cannot talk about one without mentioning the other. Just like the Mindwalk movie states: “How you can talk usefully about a tree without talking about its roots, or its leaves or its bark?”

This whole idea of systems also makes me think of chaos, because since everything is connected, it is difficult to organize it. And that is where the concept we saw in our last meeting comes in. Entropy was a term introduced in thermodynamics (physics), representing the idea of “irreversibility”, a term that everyone is familiar with. Entropy is associated with disorder, and what I understood is that our universe is heading towards entropy, so how is life, evolution, and self-organization possible in an entropic universe? 

This question made me think that everything we done is now irreversible. Men have infiltrated too much in our planet so that we could go back in time and reorganize or change the bad things that were a consequence of it. Global warming shows us everyday that we are ruining our home. It is sad, but I guess it’s the truth: we live in chaos, and instead of tryining to change ir or reverse it, we are now learning to leave with it. 

In my perception, negentropy is an illusion. I don’t think we can reverse entropy at this point. I don’t think we can organize and structure the earth again, not after all we have done. I think we can maybe decrease some of our doings (for example, the hole in the onzone layer has been shrinking its size), but erase everything we did and go back to a state of order? I am pretty sure it is impossible. And it is sad. 

I guess, in this case, we can talk about dissipative structures. They are open systems that are able to reduce their internal entropy, and then move to higher organizational states, by absorbing information from the environment and by disposing disorder. So they are kinda like islands of organization in an entropic environment, which goes to back to what I said about dicreasing just a bit our entropic world, but not erasing it. 

As human beings, I think we also have internal entropy. We find ourselves, sometimes, in a current feeling of desperation, insecurity, chaos, and, most of these times, we don’t know what to do to reduce it. This class made me aware of this, and now I think I will be able to look at my inner self more in search of this feeling of entropy, and try to reduce it the maximum I can by creating dissipative structures or looking trying to atteign a state of negentropy.

In someway, I think that this class introduced me to new concepts that I have never heard of and made me scare of how much they are present in my everyday life. However, just like I said, this class also made me aware of how I can identify them and fight against it or just control it. Thinking in systems made me aware of my own system, of how my connections are important and how I can use it to live my life while taking the best out of it. This idea of chaos was what striked me the most, because it is something that I constantly feel: the feeling of being lost in a world where everything is happening at the same time, of not having any kind of control in what is happening to me (inside or outside). But talking about it in class with my classmates made me realize that I can somehow deal with it. 

For me, the part of the class where we could talk with our classmates and meet new people who we weren’t so intimate with, was the best for me. Even if it’s awkward in those moments where no one knows what to say, or when we just don’t have anything to say, I guess it kinda put me a little bit more in this erasmus experience, and it was great. 

In my last talk, during our last meeting, where we talked about entropy, I talked with my partner about this concept of chaos and how it is present in our life, and they said something that really striked me and I think that it is what I will carry with me for my whole life after this erasmus experience: my partner was talking about how entropy made them think of needing to stop focusing on being afraid of chaos or what could go wrong, and just live with it and focus on what could go right. 

It is an optimistic way of seeing life, but I think it is what we need nowadays. Even if I don’t believe we can erase all of our mistakes to atteign a state of negentropy, I think that we can still work with the positive sides that still exist. I think it is what we need in a world full of chaos. I’m not saying that we need to be ignorant of all the negative things that exist, but we cannot live thinking about only that. We need to look for the bright side, look for what makes us feel good and live with that. Otherwise, life is not worth it. 

Mindwalk #emergence

This movie made me go into a really big and long existencial crisis. 

I admit that, in the beggining, I wasn’t excited at all to watch it, since it seemed like a type of movie that I would never watch by myself. However, I am glad that I did. At first, I found the setting a bit boring (the american politician going to France, etc.), but as the movie went going, I found myself captivated by the long conversation between the characters. I really liked the fact that almost the whole movie was a really long conversation scene about existence, going on and on about different visions and aspects that, as humans, we really need to stop and think about. 

The idea and concepts that I enjoyed the most was the clock metaphor: the fact that Decartes was the first to present this idea that nature is just a giant clock, a machine, and that humans went with it. They went with the thinking that nature has little parts and that we understand each one of these little parts and put them together as a whole and that’s how it’s supposed to be. However, the woman didn’t agree and I lost myself in her words because she presented this whole new concept of perception that triggered my existencial crisis. 

I found myselg totally agreeing with the fact that you cannot look at one single of our global problems in isolation trying to understand it and solve it, it’s not possible because of interconnectedness. Yes, everything is connected, and what we need to change is how we see the world: all the problems are simply fragments of one single crisis and that is a crisis of perception. We need to change our perception because what we do now it’s not solving a problem, it’s shifting this problem to another sphere. I think a way to summarize it, it’s quoting a sentence that the woman said: our system encourages intervention and not prevention. The examples she used to illustrate it were also really interesting and perfect to understand her point of view. 

It was a really great movie and also a perfect illustration of our class’ subject: thinking in systems, thinking that everything is connected. 

Rhizomes #emergence

When I was in school, I chose a scientific path, meaning I had a lot of biology, physics, chemistry and maths, but I had never heard the term “rhizomes” and this week’s class presented me to this really interesting term.

It is really an amazing comparison: seeing people through the outside and think that we are all our own self, but then if you look at it closer, we are connected in some way. Maybe through distant family members, through the internet, through our daily activities… It doesn’t matter the way, we are all somehow connected.

Humans live in a system, they interact somehow and they have a collective knowledge, just like plants or, more specifically, trees, as it was showed to us during class.

I think having this comparison in mind makes it easier to think in systems and understand better the idea of the systems theory, maybe if it just a layer of the whole subject.

Limits #emergence

With the evolution of human kind, we learned a lot of how we could use the environment that surround us for our benefit: we took resources, explored lands (killing native people in the process) and learned how to profit of everything we found around us. Technology was a result of it and it allowed to improve human kind and understand even better what we were capable of doing. But what is the limit of it?

Artificial intelligence has been around for a long time, and there aren’t many people in the world who can really say that they understand everything abou it. I mean, we all know that robots exist and, as far as we can tell, men are able to control it. We all know that there are machines which are able to do everything we are able to do (construct, drive, fix, etc.). I mean, there are even machines that can perform surgeries, so.. How far can it really go?

When I think of artificial intelligence, I think about something that, someday, will take our place. Maybe not all of us, but soon machines and robots will take the spot of every simple work men, like a gardener, a doorman, a waitress, a flight attendant, etc. Of course there is also a positive side, like being able to develop machines that do not damage the environement to take the place of the ones that do damage it.

I guess like all of the things that surround us, artificial intelligence has its positive and negative sides, but how can we learn to see all of it? Men have proven to be the worst judge when it comes to know your limit, and I don’t think that it will change anytime soon.

Ants #emergence

“Within systems theory and cybernetic, homeostasis describes the process whereby a system regulates itself and its environment in order to archive an optimal set of input states required to maintain its functionality and structure” 

Thinking about homeostasis was incredibly interesting, because all living systems present this characteristic. Take humans for example, when we are sick: the fact that our body tries to regulate and defend itself to adjust the variables so that internal condicitions remains stable. It is incredible to think that our body can do all of that alone, without our conscient intervention. 

We jumped from that to the Gaia Hypothesis, and even if the whole idea it’s still not all fully clair in my mind, I understood that the concept is that organisms interact with their surroundings on Earth to self-regulate and maintain the conditions for life on the planet. 

These hypothesis and concepts sometimes give me existencial crisis, because I start thinking that it’s not possible that it’s just our planet that manages to create life conditions in the whole universe. Then, my thoughts go to the other planets in other galaxies and I start thinking that we are just ants in this gigantic Universe (if we think that there’s only one universe and not multiple) and that we are reducing our system’s thinking. 

System and Collective Thinking #emergence

I can definetely say that this week’s class was my favorite. The discussion about ecosystems, ecological networks and anthropocene was incredibly interesting, awakening my curiosity and motivation. 

Having the oportunity to reflect about ecological networks and how everything was connected through nodes which could represent an individual plant or animal, a whole population or species, was amazing. I had already thought about that myself, but it was really interesting to be able to name this concept. 

We also talked about the idea of a sustainable community, how it is designed and how humans tend to interfere in it in a negative way, which was what gave inspiration to the draw I made with my group in the second part of the class, which was my favorite. I tend to be shy during the experimental part of the class, but this one I talked a bit more and I felt positively overwhelmed by the interactions with others. 

Thinking and talking about the idea that understanding ecosystems equals to understanding relationships and that this is a key aspect of system thinking, was really like a light bulb in my life. I guess this made me see more clearly what the class’ subject is about and how I can learn and write about it. I look forward to do more collective thinking and I hope there will be more classes where we will be able to draw again. 

Parts of a whole? #emergence

This week’s class made me understand a little better what this course is about. It was more of a theoretical class and I enjoyed it because I could structure in my head what to expect of the subject and future classes. I felt excited as the teacher kept talking, enjoying it to hear explanations about concepts that we think we understand, since they are in our everyday life, but that we don’t care to analyse further. 

It also made me think about the concept of seeing and understanding something as a whole: we can try and analyse each little part, understanding every single one of them that compose the whole, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That’s emergence. In fact, the whole has its own properties and characteristics of its own, so to understand it, we need more than just dividing it into parts. 

So I kept thinking to myself the next days: how can I understand better the situations in my life as a whole? How can I see it properly without disregarding some of its properties and characteristics? Is it possible to do that? 

Every individual we see and connect with has been through a kind of evolution to be there in that moment in front of us, and this individual is so much more than the little parts that composes them. They are part of a system, we are part of a system and i guess that the solution to understand all of our problems would be seeing this system as a whole phenomenom.

All Over The Globe #emergence

The second System’s Theory class came during the week bringing all sorts of interactions between the students. I felt overwhelmed by seeing all of the places we came from. In a good way, of course, because I got to see how studying and how our interests can bring us together. Maybe we are not all there for the same reasons or to achieve the same goals, but we are all going through the same situation: being in a foreign country, where the language is not our first one and where we need to meet new people, since all of our friends and family are not there.

Talking to people who came from a country which is the complete opposite of mine was an experience I will carry on with me for my whole life. I think being aware of the different cultures and costumes that are out there is essential for living together, and I got the proof of it during this class. Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Brazil… Different cultures, different meanings, different values and beliefs, but all there, together, in the same classroom.

However, even if it is a great opportunity and experience to meet new people and exchange our knowledge and life experiences in a foreign country, I can’t seem to understand where this class is trying to take us. I am really curious about learning more about the systems theory and how it can be related to social media and psychology, but I don’t think this second class were any close to explain the subject to us.

It wasn’t a bad class or a bad day, none of it. But, I think I would like to have a more theoretical class this week.

My First Thoughts #emergence

When I chose to attend this class, I wasn’t expecting much. Because all my university courses tend to be slow, all theoritical and not much interactive, I was expecting to face the same two hours that I always did back in my country.

I was surprised to find myself hooked to the propositions offered by our teacher and his way of leading the class: watching videos, getting to know a blog which was made for us to get into the subject in its whole form and, the part that made me even more interested in keep coming to the class: the interaction with other students.

I was able to imerge in the concept of systems thinking and I kept telling myself that it is something that I could use on my daily life: always think about situations and people as a whole, always think that something is there because of another something. It can be difficult, because I guess that, sometimes, this makes us loose our individuality and, even worse, it can become an obssessive way of seeing life.

So, I asked myself if it was, in fact, a good idea to take this concept out of the classroom and apply in everything I encounter. Would I become an obsessive thinker or would I understand better other people’s motivations?

I also kept questioning myself how could I apply this systems thinking into social media and I took notes, knowing that I would be able to valide or invalidate those ideas based on the next classes. I look forward to it.