What’s the difference between complex systems and complicated systems?
The most elaborate mechanical watches and sophisticated Boeing airplanes are complicated. In complicated systems, each part has to perform a very specific function. One defect may bring the entire system to a halt. Redundancy must be built into these systems when failure is not an option. We understand how complicated systems work by understanding how each part works. In complex systems, decomposing the system and analyzing its subparts may not give us a clue to the behavior of the whole. That is because complex systems have many elements interacting and exchanging multiple inputs in a dynamic and non-linear way, constantly adapting to changes in the environment and to awareness of new information from agents around them. These agents, in their adaptive interaction, frequently organize and re-organizethemselves to respond to the environment and meet their goals. While guided by relatively “simple rules,” their individual behaviors give rise to emergent structures and patterns of intera
