System Engineering & Design Architecture - Sander R.B.E. Beals (books to get back into reading txt) 📗

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/scenario/newton.htm

Just play with it a while, so you know what happens when you lift 1, 2, 3 or even 4 balls out of their rest position, and let them collide with the rest. Now if it weren't for the nuclei, the electrons wouldn't have any shape to cling to, and might be racing around like gas particles in what is called the zig-zag patterns of Brownian motion because of their colliding with colleagues every now and then. But they are glued to the nuclei, and thus make them atoms. Local variations in the relative numbers of positrons and electrons give the atoms a net charge, which allows them to attract one another. That is one of the forces that binds atoms into molecules, although it is not the only one. Gravity helps too, but where gravity is static (does not change unless the relative distances of the atoms change), the positive and negative charges are influenced by other positive and negative charges in their neighborhood. Newton made his cradle with metal balls, so the charge effect would not be noticed since the charge would evenly distribute itself over the balls in total. Had he made them of some material that is non-conductive, then the balls would have reacted like the point charges in Coulomb's Law, which would mean they would still be able to interact, but the balls might be attracted, or repelled, given their positive and negative relative charges, thus complicating the experiment (keep it simple, right?)...

Now since we believe we are living in a real world, these basic pieces of deep-seated knowledge are essential in forming our view of the world around us. Thus we are normally weary of strangers, since they still wear the cloak of negativity, instead of Harry's cloak of invisibility. Well, they might as well be invisible, if you notice how many humans do not talk to strangers on a train or bus. It takes a fair amount of positivity to throw off that cloak, and be open to anyone reaching out. Sure, once you know enough about a certain type of interaction, you may grow weary of it and decide you've had enough, but that is way more than an educated guess, or the type of default behavior we normally display to one another.

Mind you though, that very cautious approach is a direct consequence of the fact we humans have that check for integrity built into our systems. A nice hint at this self test is made in the movie Innerspace from 1987: in it, Lt. Tuck Pendleton stands in front of a mirror, slaps himself in the face a few times, and exclaims: "The Tuck Pendleton machine: zero defects." Of course sometimes we must take outside advice regarding possible defects, but that will only happen once we trust the other 'system' to be truthful to us, and correct. If my blood count is low and my doctor tells me about it (like she did last week), I won't rest until she's shown me the relevant blood counts of the past period, which make me concur with her advice... ;-)

In the end it is just what we believe, whether or not we err on the positive or negative side: hypochondriacs will disregard the professional opinion of their physicians if they tell them nothing is wrong with them, and the other extreme are guys like me who never believe they are ill, but still have to succumb to a few physical or psychological dis-eases over time....

Isaac Asimov described this same principle in his three laws of robotics (Appendix B), since his robots are designed to have embedded in their hardware or hard-wired programming the prime directives to protect (human) life. They can't even passively harm it, not even when ordered to do so by another human. This means they must treat the world around them as inherently negative, and protect humans from that. If only humans would treat each other this way.....

Inherent in Asimov's three laws is the logical but also quite subconscious deduction that androids need to be able to know what harms humans and androids, in order to be able to comply with the three laws.... The fact such knowledge allows them to do either good or bad with it is what scares most people! But the laws are the failsafe to that open possibility.

While opposites attract, the design effort is not a real matter of opposites: it is a game of Feedback, presumably across the entire circle of creators, users, abusers (www.doesitblend.net), and what not. This process (depicted on the right) is very much present in any process of Evolution. So let's go through the steps in order to show this in a clear and unambiguous way:

The Source is a System which distributes certain things, which can be very diverse in nature: imagine for instance a manufacturing plant making a given product, or a software company selling a certain program. Even shares of a company follow that same pattern: a company distributes them, and the buying and selling of the stock follows the cycle of feedback on the right to a tee! Or a well might 'produce' water, like an apple tree grows apples for us...

So yes, when Apple announces the release of the iPhone 5, it is obvious to everyone that the reception of it by the customers will be positive. But the fact that they cannot produce enough of them to fulfil the total demand will swing the evaluation of the product to a lesser value, which soon became clear from the value of Apple stock... Please also note the symmetry in the feedback loop: the Consumer's Preferences are like the Emissions of the Source, and the Improvements are the Source's Reception (or reaction) to the perceived preferences. That is why manufacturers are fanatically fishing for customer preferences and review info, in order to perfect their products!

So yes, the Evaluation of the product by the Consumers leads to them exposing their Preferences in not just one but possibly many Feedback loops:

Lack of products increases the need for production capacity.

Quality of products relates to the popularity of the product.

The Design / Preference tradeoffs determine popularity as well.

Problems with a product lead to bug reports and new releases, a feedback cycle in itself.

Reviews by customers and or professional reviewers lead to design changes, a cycle too.

A product becoming obsolete feeds the need for a newer product with better features....

In a similar manner, this process is most obvious in software design, since there too the cycle of feedback is the main drive for better quality in the software product:

A company releases software, having two types of 'defects': bugs & possible improvements.

The software is often fitted with extra functions to automatically feed back problems to the creators. Partaking in this process is a decision of the user for now, but that might change...

New updates and releases are often automatically distributed, as the user allows this. Will we reach a point where this is considered obvious to the users, and not worthy of their conscious attention?

The above points drive the Feedback, which allows the software too evolve more rapidly...

Basically, the System Engineering and Design Architecture is nothing but an attempt at making the subconscious concept we have of the structure of Systems a conscious concept in our minds. It is not new, but merely aimed at expressing that which we know is right for the concept at hand. We will turn the System inside out though, and view it from there. It is not so much a matter of responsibility that is assigned to certain systems, but much more a matter of a System assuming the responsibility for a given challenge, based on what 'talents' it already has. In this aspect, it becomes much more like us, who use our talents to pursue our aims, and to shoulder our responsibilities as we perceive them.

Let me give an example of what I mean: the software in you cell phone may have a Contact List App, and a Phone App. Now the Phone App could keep a list of contacts for itself, but since its Environment holds something that already does that, it is more effective to just define an Interface to the Contacts App, and get the information from there. Likewise, the Alarm Clock App and the Calendar App might be a closely symbiotic couple, where both have their events to process, but they also both use the more basic Notifier App to Notify the user of these events as they occur. As a last nasty one, the System Settings App would just enumerate all Settings Interfaces of the Apps in the bigger system called 'Cell Phone', and present them in a consistent manner to the user. Now since 'System Settings' is the App to present all settings info to the user, there has to be a connection between any App and the Settings App. But which would be the leader in this case? Is there really any preference to be expressed in this case? Let's look at the possible relationships between these objects....

In effect, the diagram on the right shows two triangles in which the various aspects of System Relations are usually expressed. The upside-down triangle denotes the direction of the information flow, and can be seen as Independent, Unilateral, and Bilateral. The right-side-up triangle has the parts Calling, Registering and Symbiotic. A caller simply has to know another System in order to call it, but the Registering System goes one step further: It registers with the other system, in order to allow it to send certain messages that might be of use, or in order to simply let the other system know it is available. The Symbiotic relationship is one where mutual Registration is done, so both Systems can keep tabs on each other. Yup, marriage exists even here....

What we did not observe in this diagram, is the containing relationship. But then again, the containment of one system inside a larger one is hierarchical rather than lateral. If anything, one might define it to be symbiotic: does not a tree totally overwhelmed by a climbing plant look more like one thing rather than two? Likewise, the heart is contained inside the human, but neither can live without the other....

Truly independent systems do not exist, simply because they need some Environment to live in (we call the infinite outer system God, Allah, the Incredible Machine, Force, Source, Grand Overall Design, etc.) Also, they need some System to hand them the link to the other systems they would like to call, but once they do they can still remain independent: it is like the so-called cannons in Conway's Game of Life (see previous page): they exist, and just fire in a specific direction, without ever being changed, unless another system collides with them. But the moment they require some effect to result from their 'bullets', they become relative instead of independent. Also, we Humans cannot be truly Independent: even freed of all links to fellow Humans, we are bound by Gravity to this planet we call 'Home'....

From this however, we can deduce the characteristics of ourselves as Systems. Now that is not quite