The more I dig into cybernetic (wiener), information theory, self emergence, collective intelligence and consciousness. The more as individual I have the intuition that people are “prisoner” of individualism.

Fundamental paradigm of capitalism is to have a huge class of individual mass consumer. Prisoner of “individualism” to turn people in perfect consummer.

The side effect is that, the concept of complexity, complex system, complex system dynamics, are totally stranger to most peoples.

Mainstream rationalism is based on direct causal relation between two elements. But this framework of though and analysis is very limited and has very low fertility in term of complex system. Mostly cause most interesting features or beneficial properties of collective dynamic aren’t possible not understandable with mainstream rationality.

Let’s take an exemple: water.
Water is matter, and matter in physics has three common state, either solid, either liquid, either gaz (we not gonna talk about plasma).

Can a single molecule of water be solid, or liquid, or gaz ? None of them. A single molecule is in undefined state of matter.

If so, can two isolated molecules of water can be in those states ? Nope again.

For physics, phase properties turning a set of water molecule into matter in one of those three states appears when the minimal set of molecule of water is 21.

So matter properties aren’t existing in a set of water molecules lower than having 21 ones of them.

If you aren’t aware of the works of Micheal Levin in morphogenesis and cellular self organisation, collective intelligence in tissue formation, I really push you to listen to the few interview of him on youtube.

How a set of cells are starting to communicate to collectively self organise and produce a complex living organism with demonstrating special intelligence, reproduction and adaptation is a real miracle.

None of those individual cells are able to do that alone, only when they start to communicate and build a cohesive group.

Why do I tell those things ? Cause from my perspective, there isn’t any difference between those cells and human, there isn’t any difference between those cells and company.

And each time I look back to my 20years in IT working in complex platform (finance or payment industry) I can only state that system engineering, should be renamed complex system engineering.

The final product (either a platform providing service, or a physical item) is the result of a collective intelligence trying to self organise and expand itself.
So the product is fully part of this collective intelligence as a growth bénéfice. And is fully part of this collective intelligence.

It’s like quantum mechanic: the witness of the experiment is part of the experiment. He is not indépendant and neutral.

Therefor the system engineer designing a system is not neutral, as far as the set of all individuals in a company aren’t neutral and indépendant of synthesis of their own collective intelligence whose téléologie is to give birth into a product (either service or goods)

So in conclusion, the human environment is part of the complex dynamical system, and the complexity (information level) in the outcome (product) is often deeply tied of the complexity of the collective intelligence producing it.

So system engineering should not only focus on the outcome only. Like a system engineer designing a platform for a service, but consider that the company, the product, and customer, and the world outside all those element are a super organism far more complex than the product itself, and therefore should ensure that the superstructure has all the condition for the emergence of this super organism and make it viable.