Thanks, that's an interesting book to read. My question came from a program
I made before I knew how to make an object. It was a hangman applet. It had
a ui class and a domain class. I treat the methods in the domain class like
objects. I thought the methods were objects. I've just been changing that
applet to object style, and I'm realising that it is more complicated to
write that way, maybe overly complicated for what the program does. This
swarm stuff seems it might be a step up into more complexity. So more to
learn........
Thanks,
Gary 


>Gary McGovern wrote:
>
>> I'm struggling a bit at the moment, trying to justify distributed
>> intelligence in program design. Or if centralised is better, or whether
>> there should be a shift between centralised and distributed depending
u>pon
>> the nature or size of of the program/system. Maybe it is because what I>
am
>> mostly doing is small - writing centalised seems quicker and simpler to
>> write. And distributing the intelligence I do because it is good form ->
my
>> course texts say do it. Maybe in the long term it works better.
>
>Doing something just because someone else says so is never satisfactory,
>even 
>if it should work. Usually, there is a reason why certain things are 
>recommended, and this reason can be examined for validity. Often this 
>examination reveals specific conditions under which a certain course of 
>action is valid and also when it is not.
>
>With regard to your question, you may find it worthwhile reading Kevin
Ke>lly's 
>book "Out Of Control", which deals with what he calls "vivisystems",
arti>fial 
>systems that are modeled after the way biological systems function. I
fou>nd a 
>reference to this book on Ted Kaehler's web site, and a little bit of web>

>searching revealed that it is available online in its entirety here: 
>http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php
>(I just ordered my printed copy via amazon, too.)
>
>One interesting point he makes (which apparently also gave the book its
t>itle) 
>is that massively parallel self-organizing processing systems will, at
th>e 
>extreme end, be de facto uncontrollable systems, at least not in the way
>we 
>can control the linear sequential systems we have known so far. Here's a 
>quote:
>
>"As our inventions shift from the linear, predictable, causal attributes
>of 
>the mechanical motor, to the crisscrossing, unpredictable, and fuzzy 
>attributes of living systems, we need to shift our sense of what we
expec>t 
>from our machines. A simple rule of thumb may help:
>
>      For jobs where supreme control is demanded, good old clockware is
t>he 
>way to go.
>
>      Where supreme adaptability is required, out-of-control swarmware is>
what 
>you want.
>
>For each step we push our machines toward the collective, we move them
to>ward 
>life. And with each step away from the clock, our contraptions lose the
c>old, 
>fast optimal efficiency of machines. Most tasks will balance some control>
for 
>some adaptability, and so the apparatus that best does the job will be
so>me 
>cyborgian hybrid of part clock, part swarm. The more we can discover
abou>t 
>the mathematical properties of generic swarm processing, the better our 
>understanding will be of both artificial complexity and biological 
>complexity."
>
>Regards, Lothar
>
>
>
>