Scale

Success in designing and building ships had been achieved by the gradual accumulation of knowledge and technique via a process of trial and error, resulting in well-established rules of thumb passed on, to a large extent, by the mechanisms of apprenticeship and learning on the job. Typically, each new ship was a minor variant on a previous one, wit

Networks have evolved so that the energy needed to sustain an average individual’s life and perform the mundane tasks of living is minimized in order to maximize the amount of energy available for sex, reproduction, and the raising of offspring.

unbounded growth cannot be sustained without having either infinite resources or inducing major paradigm shifts that “reset” the clock before potential collapse occurs. We have sustained open-ended growth and avoided collapse by invoking continuous cycles of paradigm-shifting innovations such as those associated on the big scale of human history wi

quarter-power scaling in general arises from the dynamics and geometry of optimized space-filling branching networks.

The hope is that such an integrated simulation of the whole economy could provide a realistic test bed for evaluating different strategies for economic stimulus, such as whether to reduce taxes or increase public spending; and perhaps most important, to be able to predict tipping points or forecast imminent crises so as to avoid potential recession

providing the very reason for our existence as the agents through which the universe would know itself.

Cities are remarkably resilient and the vast majority persist. Just think of the awful experiment that was done seventy years ago when atom bombs were dropped on two cities, yet just thirty years later they were thriving.

so much so that a great deal of what you now see on the screen and in advertisements, whether “realistic” battle scenes, glorious landscapes, or futuristic fantasy, is based on fractal paradigms. The Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, and Game of Thrones would be drab versions of realistic fantasies without the early work and insights on fractals.

Change and, by implication, innovation, must occur in order to continue growing and avoid collapse.