bilateral kellerberrin

Still in Perth. Intended to go back to keller earlier, but the crappy train timetable and my inability to book ahead have conspired to keep me here.

Have been gobbling up Jo’s book “Emergence” by Steven Johnson, which tackles self organising systems which seemingly have no “control centre” telling them what to do, and yet which still manage to be remarkably complex. Ant colonies and cities are two of his examples. Johnson talks about the computer game Sim City, of which you are the mayor, and you have to choose where to build housing, commercial, and industrial zones, and apportion funding from taxes to police and fire brigades and the upkeep of transportation services.

Jono managed to find a very early version of this game which was designed for windows 3.1 – about the level of complexity I could manage. Sim City is addictive, and I was up bleary eyed til after two in the morning trying to encourage growth by zoning parklands around housing developments, and keeping taxes low. Occasionally, tornados wipe out whole precincts. My city went through three boom-and-busts in the meantime. I guess the “point” of the game is that “control” is not a simple process. A decision in one area has countless reverberations in different places and over a long period of time. The city becomes like a garden in which you can plant things, but you cannot control how well they will grow, or what will happen to them over time. If it’s at all possible, I felt some glimmer of sympathy for NSW premier Bob Carr, as I built more coal fired power stations (they are cheaper than Nuclear) and reduced spending on public transport so as to have cash available for new housing zones (more residents=higher tax income).

Hopefully tomorrow I will return to Kellerberrin, and get back to whatever it is that I am doing there.