According to Dr. Cochrane, there is no going back. We have grown in concert with the safety, security, and comfort afforded by technology, and people are healthier, better educated, and living longer, in larger numbers than ever before. Very few people make mobile phone calls when motorway traffic is in free flow, but when there is an accident, over 1,000 people will try to call office and home in minutes. Whilst we build structured and complex systems to complete essentially simple tasks, Mother Nature does the reverse. Ants and bees complete incredibly complex tasks with little hierarchy and very simple communication channels.
Artificial life is a new area that offers novel solutions to the management of chaos.
It involves sexual reproduction, competition, survival of the fittest, and evolution. Well, many of our old institutions and working practices will have to go. A world of bits does not recognize the limits of physical geography or even nationhood.