As human beings we tend to think rather highly of ourselves – software architects even more so! However, scientific discoveries from the last 150 years have revealed how our species is merely a bit-player in the grand, ongoing experiment in self-organisation that we call "Nature". This talk highlights some of the more significant ideas that have emerged from the discipline of software engineering over the last six decades, and examines how Mother Nature is usually one step ahead of us by a few hundred million years or so. It also invites us to imagine where natural paradigms might guide us in the future, if we are willing to listen.
18. “The definition of evolutionary architecture that
we state here includes two critical characteristics:
incremental and guided.”
– Building Evolutionary Architectures
45. • Ordered
• Fixed pattern of behaviour
• Chaotic
• Random patterns of behaviour
• Critical
• Thin line between Order and Chaos
• Exhibit spontaneous order
• Multiple stable patterns of behaviour (Attractors)
• 𝐴𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑠 ≈ 𝑁
49. Sustainable Criticality
• Live projects need to achieve and maintain a state of Criticality
• Change must be as easy as possible, but no easier
• View the ability to accommodate change as an investment
• Prepare your architecture for a graceful death
• Architect:
• Part Engineer
• Part Gardener
• Part Medic
• Part Raccoon
• Not a Panda
50. Recommended Reading
• Biomimicry Institute
• https://biomimicry.org/
• “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature”
• Janine Benyus
• “Residuality Theory, random simulation, and attractor networks”
• Barry O’Reilly, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 201 (2022), pages 639-645
• “The Edge of Organization: Chaos and Complexity Theories of Formal Social Systems”
• Russ Marion