Em breve, um post mais elaborado sobre esse tema. Seguem algumas coisas que estive lendo do Manovich.
“The new paradigm begins to emerge across a number of scientific and technical fields, eventually reaching popular culture as well. It includes a number of distinct areas, approaches, and subjects: chaos theory, complex systems, self-organization, autopoiesis, emergence, artificial life, the use of the models and metaphors borrowed from evolutionary biology (genetic algorithms, “memes”), neural networks. While distinct from each other, most of them share certain basic assumptions. They all look at complex dynamic and non-linear systems and they model the development and/or behavior of these systems as the interaction of a population of simple elements. This interaction typically leads to emergent properties – a priori unpredictable global behavior. In other words, the order that can be observed in such systems emerges spontaneously; it can’t be deduced from the properties of elements that make up the system. (…)
What is important is that having realized the limits of linear top-down models and reductionism, we are prepared to embrace a very different approach, one which looks at complexity not as a nuisance which needs to be quickly reduced to simple elements and rules, but instead as the source of life – something which is essential for a healthy existence and evolution of natural, biological, and social systems.”
MANOVICH, Lev. Abstraction and complexity. Disponível em <http://www.manovich.com>. Acessado em 10/01/2008. 2004