Chapter XVI

Applied Systems

The concept of applied systems revolves around the notion of an applied meta-system, or alternatively, the application of systems to the solution of complex problem sets in reality that involve a number of different inputs and hybrid designs. Applied systems must tackle the problem of goodness of fit to actual phenomenal reality, and entails as well practical problem solving and the heuristics of pragmatic procedures built around naturally occurring patterns.

The ability of recognize and define a problem in reality is the first step in the design and realization of applied meta-systems, especially when such problems appear to be multi-factorial and complex in nature, and inherently intractable of solution.

In my approach to the development and elaboration of applied meta-systems, I offer the ground up construction and top-down design of a basic meta-system, or rather of a set of basic meta-systems operating at different levels, with the aim of integrating these meta-systems and elaborating and refining them through further cycles of development. This is a goal much easier to state than to achieve when we consider the fact that even small subcomponents of such complex multi-component meta-systems will present technical challenges towards integration that require enormous expertise and energy to overcome.

I have sought to elaborate applied meta-systems and subsystems at various levels of design, as well as what can be called hybrid meta-systems that incorporate multiple levels of function into a single design. What is expected out of this line of development is of course the convergence of meta-systems of different kinds towards a common unified meta-system, and it is this notion of a single unified, applied meta-system that encompasses all possible subsystems, with which to define a development baseline and framework for such development to proceed in the first place. The model of a unified meta-system is an ideal standard against which we can compare our own state of the art of the development of our component meta-systems. Of course this standard model is not itself a static system, but dynamic and refineable in its own terms as well as in terms of its component subsystems. Defining such a model allows us to partition our problem solving to smaller subsets in a coordinated manner.

Human technological civilization can be said to have achieved a meta-state system by means of natural historical development of such systems, than by any deliberate or overall plan. It was arrived at by a countless series of experiments and trial and error endeavors, leading to a workable level of integration.

The applied systems that are of greatest interest are those that may have central strategic significance in the larger world, and would include basic energy systems, various biological systems and systems of human cultural mediation. All of these would be expected to become increasingly integrated within a single unified, automated meta-system. There would be a host of other alternative applications for systems as well that would be spin-offs of these central efforts. Again, the standard is movement towards a single integrated system that is comprehensive even though in its initial stages it remains quite basic and rudimentary. For example, a comprehensive but basic meta-system would combine as many facets of energy production & utilization, meta-biotic processes, and human cultural mediation within an umbrella system of automated cybernetics as much as possible. The original model of such a system might in fact be on a quite reduced scale, but in theory it should be possible to grow and clone the same system to a scale that would eventually become global in scope.