We need to talk about scalar nests.
Sorry for the jargon.
But it’s relevant because a group of influential climate leaders are calling for us to establish a global environmental response network.
And they want to do it using scalar nests.
A term which essentially describes:
the multi-level interconnected mechanisms within complex systems that can trigger exponential outcomes.
Hence scalar nests and butterfly effects.
This has implications for the field of generative system design, which processes live data feeds into dynamically responsive visualizations.
A key feature of generative systems is the digital activation of scalar nests. Which, when deployed in service of ecological directives, could tether vast human networks to a live earth systems feedback signal.
Feels like the (r)evolution.
We will outline the system, the tech, and the opportunity:
Nests 101
From a system design perspective: nests are a framework for understanding the components and dynamics of a complex system.
Conceptually, they help visualize a multi-level architecture of layers or hierarchies, where each level contains subsystems.
These are nests:
Two schemas of nested systems: On the right, an illustration of the organism as a hierarchy of sequentially enclosed systems . On the left, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory,; different levels of environmental influences on an individual’s growth and behavior.
In explaining nests we often use the analogy of Russian Dolls, but this implies that all nests are compartmentalized into rigid hierarchies, only exerting influence on their adjacent (enclosed or enclosing) systems.
In fact that isn’t true. Complex systems exhibit dynamics that demonstrate interconnectedness and interdependencies between non-adjacent scales, akin to the quantum feature of entanglement.
Meaning there are inherent and mostly undetectable dynamics that make nests interoperable across different scales, allowing for the possibility of minor actions or ‘inputs’ to cascade through the system.
These are called emergent behaviors and when the right combination of factors are triggered in a nested system, they can have unexpected and massively disruptive outcomes.
Especially on the internet.
Nest-JACKING FTW
The internet is one giant scalar nested system of distributed human networks.
When these networks are activated they have the potential to deliver geometric outcomes known as butterfly effects.
Like the Game Stop ‘short squeeze’ of 2021 - now the stuff of internet lore and a Netflix movie - in which a single account on a reddit chat board instigated the coordinated viral buy-up of GameStop shares, leading to punishing losses for hedge funds shorting the shares.
Or viral social media campaigns that escalated the Arab Spring into a large-scale movement forcing the resignation of strongman President Hosni Mubarak after three decades in power.
Of course, these phenomena happen all the time within our social networks.
A disabled army vet makes a video about his electric wheelchair that goes viral on facebook and leads to millions in donations for other vets to get theirs.
Amazing.
A random teenager creates a global health scare when their TikTok challenge to ingest laundry detergent pods goes super-viral.
Not so amazing. (but also amazing)
There are countless examples of posts hitting network effect for reasons that often seem undecipherable. Or unpredictable. Studying these butterflies would tell us a lot about the emergent dynamics that hide in complex social-digital systems. We just haven’t done a good job at creating tools to do that.
Until it really matters.
When a viral information campaign begins to challenge power structures, the authorities-that-be immediately trace and cut off the source.
Like when hedge fund titans shut down the reddit board WallStreetBets (which had framed the short squeeze as a David and Goliath battle between the 99 and 1 per-centers).
Similarly, Egyptian authorities ordered a shutdown of nearly all Internet access leaving 90 percent of Egyptian networks out of service in a critical moment of the action.
So the question begs:
At a time when so many earth signals are in the red, why aren’t we harnessing the dormant emergent forces within the digital scalar nests to engineer survivalist butterflies?
The Planetary Boundaries and Doomsday Clock, two of our most recognized global threat alerts are in the red zone.
And if we did, what would a system designed to respond geometrically to planetary prime directives even look like?
The short answer is it would look like a generative system — meaning one powered by live-data and tethered to a vast array of ecospheric sensors and personal digital devices to establish a responsive planetary feedback system that would allow us to make change — and see it happening in real-time — at scale.
Generative Systems: Harnessing Complexity To DeLiver Outcomes AT-SCALE
For those new to the field: generative design involves writing algorithms that process data into digital patterns and objects. Below is a quick video primer:
Our video primer on generative, or computational, design.
When they are powered by real-time data, generative systems provide dynamic adaptive models that can respond quickly to changes in the systems they are signaling.
In the context of environmental systems, this means the processing of complex multi-contextual data flows into a composite, holistic signal.
Thus, when a data visualization updates from static to generative, it is no longer a mere visual.
It becomes a ‘living’ earth systems signal that is dynamically responsive to every terrestrial and biological data source - in every jurisdiction and at every scale - that is generating it.
From underwater ocean sensors to humans in operating multinational supply chains.
The Planetary Boundaries (right) skinned with a generative composite of its nine subsidiaries. One of which is Ocean Acidification, here with a sample of three of its subsidiary drivers. You can see these in motion in the video, below.
And, by their nature, generative systems… generate… a live feedback loop of all interventions by stakeholders - individual or collective - captured by instruments tethered to the planetary signal.
In a scalar generative system, individuals and organizations can see themselves as nested change agents within a global framework, that dynamically updates the master planetary signal based on their individual and collective actions.
A generative system may also surface the dynamics that generate butterfly effects, teaching us about the emergent forces dormant within our human scalar nests.
And our ecological response networks could begin to match the efficiency and scale of the Market-technologies.
Which, given the increasingly shrill cry from climate leaders about the status of Earth systems, should be our most primary objective.
Call and Response
In a recent paper, Rockstrōm et al. (the climate scientists who manage the Planetary Boundaries) urgently call for the activation of a global human response network to address the challenges of the Anthropocene epoch.
Specifically, through a multi-scalar “nested Earth system”.
Yup, scalar nests.
And herein lies the great opportunity.
As climate scientists begin to think about ways to catalyze global collective action, they will have to consider evolving their signaling models from analog to digital.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of generative design in operationalizing nested systems for human-ecological benefits.
The transition from static-analog is not merely a technological upgrade but a fundamental evolution in how we process environmental signals and respond to them.
We have received the signal from our leaders and we are responding!
Below we present one generative system that could be open-sourced and implemented immediately to initiate this shift.
If you have any questions, comments, or critiques, we’d love to hear them. You can reach us via: info [at] ora [dot] systems.
Thank you!
