(2021-07-02) Brander Open-Ended Tools For Infinite Games

Gordon Brander: Open-ended tools for infinite games. Open-ended (generative) ecosystems are where innovation comes from... Open-ended systems generate upward-spirals of evolutionary complexity.

And biological evolution might not be the only kind of open-ended system. Here are a few systems that appear to exhibit open-ended behavior:

• Biological evolution
• Economies
• Language
• Technology
• The internet and the web

innovation comes from the system surprising itself.

So, how does this relate to tools for thought? If we are interested in innovation, or value creation, or just in generating new ideas, it might be worth studying open-ended systems.

my first heuristic is that an open-ended tool is made up of an alphabet and a mechanism of composition.

My second heuristic comes from Leigh Van Valen’s Red Queen Hypothesis: If you stay in one place, you’ll fall behind, and this coevolutionary pressure generates all kinds of symbiotic upward-spiraling complexity.

My third heuristic comes from an A-Life paper, “Complex Adaptations and the Evolution of Evolvability" (Wagner, Altenberg, 1996): For open-ended evolution to occur, the system itself needs to be evolvable.

My fourth heuristic is a cheat—human beings are open-ended systems. (open system)

the entire ecosystem of silicon valley is built on top of open-ended ecosystems, and could not exist without them. Programming languages, open source software, Linux, the internet, the web, are all open-ended systems. Given these open-ended systems provoked so much value creation, I wonder what might happen if we built a few more?

• (2007-01-20) Yegge Great Software Systems