* * * * * “You could create a mechanical ballet by programming a group of rolling robots to move in sync. But your program would be a closed system designed from the outside—one robot would get bumped an inch out of place, and the whole thing would fall apart. You can do it cheaper and faster just by letting a dozen of those little vacuum cleaner robots loose together in a space to move randomly. At first they will just clean the floor individually, but over time maybe the rhythms of creation will begin to move them together, as they start to dance in patterns that are more startling than anything a single programmer might design, like schools of fish in the sea. Consider boids, which are digital objects that move on a screen. When you place a number of boids on a screen with three or four simple rules telling each to match the velocity of the others, move randomly, and avoid collisions, after a while they will begin to move together as a group in complex patterns resembling the flocking of birds. These patterns cannot be programmed but must emerge within the system organically—a process that is called “random” in Western worldviews but is in fact following the patterns of creation.”
Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
by Tyson Yunkaporta
