WHAT ARE COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS?
Apparently complex adaptive behaviors that emerge as a consequence of nonlinear spatio-temporal interactions among a large number of components or subsystems are ubiquitous in nature. Systems that exhibit such behavior have come to be known as complex adaptive systems (CAS). Examples of CAS that exist in nature include immune systems, multicellular organisms, nervous systems, ecologies, societies, etc. Examples of synthetic (man-made) CAS include parallel and distributed computing systems, large-scale communication networks, artificial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, large software systems, economies, etc. Researchers from a number of disparate areas have begun to study the behavior, control and coordination, communication, adaption, learning, and evolution structures and processes in CAS. Of particular interest are algorithmic, information processing, and complexity-theoretic characterizations of CAS that are being developed by researchers in Computer Science, Information Th
