[FRIAM] Self-organization

[Jochen Fromm]

Of course it is a buzzword and a very broad term. 
I agree that the term is subjective. What I mean is: 
the concept is useful to explain some causal relationship 
only at the border between a system and it's environment,
if the system is not too big and still comprehensible.
The earth as a whole and the computer are both "self-organizing"
systems which consume energy and produce entropy (heat). Yet they 
are very different, and "self-organization" explains nothing
here. The term self-organization in general depends on your 
view of the system. If you say: here is the system, 
and there is the environment, and if the environment 
is not organizing the system, then one can say that the 
system organizes itself (somehow).

I think Ashby argued in his original paper "Principles of 
the Self-Organizing System" that no machine can be self-organized 
(in the sense of organizational change from bad or useless 
forms to good and useful types of organization) unless it 
is coupled to another machine. His paper was quite critical,
and it is remarkable that Ashby as a pioneer in the area of 
self-organization claims that there's no such thing as 
self-organization in many cases. And he is right: I recently 
got a new self-cleaning razor (a Braun 8595 Activator), and 
it consists of two machines, the razor itself, and a docking 
station which cleans the razor after the use and charges it up.

-J.