I think Fred Hapgood has this just right.

Austrian school economics and developmental biology have long swapped concepts and vocabulary to describe the development and behavior of as complex adaptive systems. I think we are, as Fred suggests, beginning to recognize networked engineered systems as complex adaptive systems.
Complex adaptive systems have large numbers of diverse agents that interact. Each agent reacts to the actions of the other agents and to changes in environment. Agents are autonomous, using distributed control and decentralized decision making, Eventually, the dominant interaction becomes the agents interacting with the system environment that was itself created by the agents’ own independent decision making.

In economics, we call the order that arises out of markets emergent self organization. In biology, we call it embryology. In either case, a large scale pattern emerges out of the smaller decisions and interactions. The emergent pattern is not imposed top-down, but rather arises from decentralized agents interacting within bounds of distributed control (or self control if you will).

A characteristic of meta-systems (or systems of systems) that demonstrate self organization is resilience in the face of change, what the economists call adaptive capacity. Market design theory, in the news this week with a new Nobel Prize, is in part concerned with ensuring adaptive capacity.

I was fascinated by the allusion to work in Bologna, defining system interactions in biological terms. I have been in conversations about the design of the power grid wherein we have touched on whether agent interactions should feel more like haptics, and the agent interactions more like tropisms. It sounds as if they have gone beyond conversation. Fred, can you do me the favor of posting a reference?

We are just beginning to apply the concepts of biology and markets to aggregates of engineered systems. In nature, systems that have too many direct interactions become brittle, and break badly. The Cleveland Outage of 2001 could be described as such a shattering, with the cracks extending into Canada and the East Coast. Less control and more heterogeneity in agents may be what we need to acquire resilience in our engineered systems.
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It is the theory that decides what can be observed." - Albert Einstein
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Toby Considine
Chair, OASIS oBIX TC
blog: www.NewDaedalus.com

Ray Kurzwiel's book, "The Singularity is Near" is an excellent compilation of data on this and other related topics demonstrating the convergence of technology and biology. A facinating read, albeit long!

At its core, Autonomic Networks change our whole concept of ‘what is a network’, ‘where are the corporate boundaries’, and ‘what is network and service management’ - radically. Some of these principles are so compelling (such as discovery and self-configuration) that we are implementing them today even as our incomplete understanding of them improves year over year. But to truly understand and manage our existing and future networks, we need to see them as complex, organized, evolving systems and develop a ‘top down’ approach to controlling the transition of the existing network toward more autonomics. To make this practical concept a reality, we need (1) a well understood picture of how things actually work, (2) a set of clearly explicated goals, and (3) a set of plans and processes which provide for a practical transition from what we have to what we can see will be better.

In two articles published this summer in Pipeline Publications (www.pipelinepub.com) we explored where research and development is today in autonomic networks and autonomic communications. Then we dove into designing and building what we call self-* (pronounced self-star) systems. Self-* is a shortcut term for systems which are designed specifically to be self-organizing and self-managing, including properties such as: self-defining, self-configuring, self-awareness, self-optimizing, self-protecting, self-healing (self-monitoring, self-diagnostics, self-restoration). Further these systems exhibit the structural characteristic of self similarity. While we cannot yet exploit a full understanding of the behavior of autonomic networks we can see a way of exploiting the properties of autonomic communications. Self-* systems are ‘emerging’ today but it will take determined leadership to change.
You can follow this at Pipeline or download the white papers at:

http://www.ltcinternational.com/inside-out/2007/autonomic-networks-autonomic-communication.php
http://www.ltcinternational.com/inside-out/2007/self-networks-helping-networks-help-themselves.php