PROJECT LOA
Influences
The concept of Loa is influenced directly from William Gibson.
"The Loa are the spirits of Haitian Vodoo. They are also referred to as Mystères and the Invisibles. Unlike saints or angels however, Loas are not simply prayed to… they are served. This makes the relationship between human and Loa, a personal one. Practitioners of voodoo do more than venerate their Loas, they “feed” them. For this service, they expect results from their Loa, in return. Loa, with their individual strengths and foibles, must deliver, if they are to remain relevant.
Loa Matrix voodoo gods; also called 'Divine Horsemen'; probably sentient parts of loose AIs in the matrix set free after the unification of Wintermute and Neuromance
Complicated mechanism and a Complex system
The scientist *John Holland* observed in a famous paper that helped establish the discipline of chaos science. Holland spent years considering these puzzling, hard-to-model systems and spotted at least one common theme: Whether it was webs of finance, such as the futures exchange, or immunological networks or our own brains, highly connected systems share what Holland labeled an evolving structure—they never stay the same. They seem to shift with an easy plasticity, in response to internal pressures or external changes. This is why so much unexpected chaos is occurring now, from government collapses to economic crises. Connection means systems take on new forms. In many cases, they become better, stronger, more adaptively fit. It isn’t simply that the unexpected appears or that there is more or less good or evil now; it’s that the systems are evolving. Holland thought the world was filled with such evolutions, no different from species’ adjusting (or not) to a hotter climate or some fast new predator. He called the networks that produce these sorts of innovations complex adaptive systems.
*“complex”* comes to us from the Latin world plexus, meaning “having parts,” which hints at the interwoven, layered nature of any object. What appears simple — a flower, our skin, the value of a dollar bill — is in fact a plexus, loaded with twitches and influences.I’m interested in complex systems. Systems like how Jon Holland describes.
The differences between a are as follows: Complicated mechanisms can be designed, predicted, and controlled. Jet engines, artificial hearts, and your calculator are complicated in this sense. They may contain billions of interacting parts, but they can be laid out and repeatedly, predictably made and used. They don’t change. Complex systems, by contrast, can’t be so precisely engineered. They are hard to fully control. Human immunology is complex in this sense. The World Wide Web is complex. A rain forest is complex: It is made up of uncountable buzzing, connecting bugs and birds and trees. Order, to the extent that it exists in the Amazon basin, emerges moment by moment from countless, constant interactions. The uneven symphonic sound of l’heure bleue, that romantic stopping point at dawn when you can hear the forest waking bird by bird, is the sound of complexity engaging in a never-the-same-twice phase transition. The word “complex” comes to us from the Latin world plexus, meaning “having parts,” which hints at the interwoven, layered nature of any object.
Games for example usual contain complex mechanisms. This is a set outcome based on “gears or mechanics” to achieve a goal. Goal being the operative word.
However in a complex system, the mechanism lead to to a altogether different destination. Often times these same set of rules could lead to an altogether different outcome.
Most of our networked world is a pool of buzzing, fresh interaction—not only hard to predict but also constantly on the cusp of making something new. Scientists such as Holland call this process emergence, referring to the way that bottom-up interactions between cells or chips or traders or cars—create an order, often in forms that have never existed before. The fundamental uncertainty of a complex process means that when we look at the world, we often forget it is taking place. It’s easier to assume that a predictable, linear, complicated logic is at work, an “a leads to b and c” sort of process: Revolution leads to freedom, which leads to democracy, for instance.