Here is video of my work on what we can learn from natural adaptive systems, and about how to be adaptable in our own lives and institutions. This short video discusses just a few of the basic attributes of adaptable systems–their decentralized organization, their use of creative redundancy, their extensive use of symbiosis, and the fact that evolutionary systems essentially learn from success more than failure. The work and the book I discuss grew out of a wonderful collaborative working group on “Darwinian Security” I organized at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis several years ago center around the simple (but huge) question of “What can we learn from biology and evolution about how to keep ourselves secure in a dangerous and unpredictable world?” . Dominic Johnson (ETVOL editor) and Dan Blumstein were members of that group as well as other really thoughtful biologists (Geerat Vermeij, Michael Hochberg, Greg Dietl), anthropologists (Richard Sosis, Candace Alcorta, John Tooby), network scientists (Ferenc Jordan) and security experts (Terence Taylor) to name a few, and these discussions grew into other working groups at Duke University, AAAS, and Edinburgh. In addition, my thoughts were highly influenced by the real world experiences of first responders, soldiers and Marines, intelligence officers and public health practitioners with whom I discussed these ideas during classes at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Dominic Johnson gives a nice summary of this “Natural Security” project here
www.learningfromtheoctopus.com
www.naturalsecurity.arizona.edu
