• Medientyp: E-Artikel
  • Titel: Virtual Environments and the Concept of Synergy
  • Beteiligte: DeLanda, Manuel
  • Erschienen: MIT Press, 1995
  • Erschienen in: Leonardo
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • ISSN: 0024-094X; 1530-9282
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  • Beschreibung: <p>THE CONCEPT OF AN "EMERGENT PROPERTY," A PROPERTY OF THE whole that is not shared by its constituent parts, has acquired a new currency in the age of digital simulations. The reason is that, almost by definition, an emergent property defies analysis: if we perform a decomposition of a whole into constituent parts, and we follow this operation by simply adding the parts back together, we will miss any properties that were more than the sum of the parts. The virtual environments that computers (particularly massively parallel ones) allow us to build can become the tools to perform the operation we need here, which is not analysis but synthesis. The discipline of artificial life serves as a good example of this approach, since its "experiments" consist in unleashing populations of virtual animals (complete with their own "DNA") into a simulated environment, where the emergent traits and behaviors that these populations generate can be studied over many generations.</p>