General System Theory and The Internet Design Idea - Essay Example

General System Theory and The Internet Design Idea Gp Capt (R) Noel Moitra VM Administrator, Academia-Research.com 01-30 17:04 The Internet is perhaps the most important invention of an era beginning in the 1980s and is still in the process of evolution. The future seems limitless and the Internet will, in all probability govern the life style of the human being in the days ahead, rendering current trends of market approach and inter/intra-personal communication outmoded. The World Wide Web will grow alongside, as the two are complementary ingredients of the global communications set up that is currently envisaged.

This essay will look at the main design idea behind the origin of the Internet and, taking a general systems theory perspective, propose possible consequences of that idea. The Internet The simplest definition of ‘Internet’ is “A worldwide system of interconnected networks and computers”. A more technical newer version is "A worldwide system of interconnected networks that use the Transmission Control Protocol - Internet protocol" (TCP/IP) (ibid). J.C.R. Licklider, a U.S. scientist wrote in 1962 about interaction through a ‘Galactic Network’ (Schnarr, 2008): Each network should be able to work on its own, requiring no modification to participate in the Internet.

Each would have a gateway, to link it to the outside world, a larger computer. This gateway would cut-down workload and to speed up traffic, with no censorship. Packages would go through the fastest available route, bypassing jams. The gateways would always be open and its operating principles would be freely available to all networks, motivating them to carry out independent but coalescing research (ibid). Licklider, now acknowledged as the spark behind the Internet, was considered way ahead of his time when he proposed the ‘open architecture self-contained networks supra (ibid).

’The Americans set up their Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1957 (Griffiths, 2002). By 1968/69, research had developed sufficiently for ARPA to publish a plan for a computer network system called ARPANET (ibid). Data packet switching technology, invented in England in 1965 was imported for integration with their system. Packet switching allowed travel of messages from point A to point B across a network (ibid). Surviving a nuclear attack was not Arpanets motivation, nor was building a global communications network (Griffiths, 2002).

“It was not about communicating over distances either, as we understand the net today. Arpanet was about time-sharing. Time sharing permitted research institutions to use other institutions’ computers when they had calculations to do for which they did not have the facility. This was the prime vision of the named luminaries about the Internet” (Peter, 2003). "What the Arpanet didnt address was the issue of interconnecting multiple networks and all the attendant issues that arose. Conceived in 1974, TCP/IP was added to Arpanet officially in 1983” (Griffiths, 2002).

It met Licklider’s crucial proviso that the system should have an open architecture. Had it stayed on these lines, the Internet would provide screens full of monotonous one-sized single-font text. Although good for accessing and exchanging information, it would inevitably become soporific. There would have been no World Wide Web! Before progressing further, it is essential to understand one generally confounding factor: Entropy. Jones (n.d.) defines entropy as “the quantitative measure of disorder in a system.

” The first law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed but can be converted to another form (Skyttner,L. 2005). The second law states that “in any closed system, entropy will increase”(ibid). Moreover, “the entropy of a system formed by combining two or more systems will be more than the sum of the individual entropies of the two closed systems” (ibid). Bertalanffy (1968) noticed ‘structural similarities or isomorphisms in different fields’, leading him to examine and propound the General Systems Theory (GST), which he called a general science of wholeness.

GST is “a theory cutting across most other theories linking closely, e.g. organization, information and communication (Skyttner,L. 2005, p 40)” --in other words, the main components of today’s Internet. A System is defined by Bertalanffy (1968) as “a set of elements standing in interrelations.” According to him, the viability of this system depends on “its ability to acquire energy through information transmission. Without the exchange of information, the interrelations and system would not exist” (Fitch, 2004).

Zera (www.pilambda.org, 2002), states “Systems tend to be very complex, making it impossible to create a checklist regarding systems-based theory and its applications.” He adds, “ Since systems are complex, nonlinear, and dynamic (Kelso 1995), they are constantly emerging into something new (Fogel and Lyra 1997).” He then states the fundamental point around which GST revolves: “Systems are more than the sum of their parts” (Bertalanffy 1968; Kelso 1995). Note that this is a parallel to entropy.

It is important to understand the “whole and its contextual relationship to the parts that make it up—focusing on the individual components yields a loss of understanding (ibid).” “System perturbations promoting change may dramatically change the entire operating system” (Kelso 1995): change begets change. “Furthermore, change is an important facilitator for system growth and essential for self-organization” (ibid). The core point of this paper is stated by Kyttner (2005, p 34): “Systems thinking expands the focus of the observer, whereas analytical thinking reduces it.

” Thus GST “emphasizes the synthesis of relationships as opposed to reductionistic analysis as a way of learning how systems function” (Fitch, 2004) .There is enough justification to state that GST would not have allowed the Internet to stagnate at Arpanet level and that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs would rise to the pre-eminent status they enjoy today. So what comes next? As of today, the whole world is awaiting Apple’s IPad. Everything is going miniature and robotic. Technology will make the world an easier place to live in.

But there is a negative aspect that cannot be overlooked. Frankly, I shudder when I think of a robotic era, when everything is automated and mankind reduced to deciding which button to push next. I would prefer to live in a day and age where I am of some intrinsic value, not just a set of bar-coded numbers on an organization’s roster, with no peace, privacy or individuality. References CitedBertalanffy, L. von. General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. Revised edition, 1968.

New York:George Braziller.Fitch, Dale. Client-Controlled Case Information: A General System Theory Perspective (2004). Extracted from Journal Article Excerpt, available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_hb6467/is_3_49/ai_n29107334/pg_2/?tag=content;col1Fogel and Lyra. Systematic Chaos: Self-Organizing Systems and the Process of Change; 1997, Pp. 199–224 in The Psychological Meaning of Chaos, ed. F. Masterpasqua and P. Perna. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Corporation, as reported in http://www.pilambda.org/horizons/v81-1/81-1_zera_intro.

pdfGriffiths, Richard T. From ARPANET to World Wide Web; (Leiden University) extracted from http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap2.htm# on January 29, 2010.Jones, Andrew, Z., About.com Guide; extracted on January 29, 2010 from http://physics.about.com/od/glossary/g/entropy.htmKelso, J. A. S. Dynamic Patterns:The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior. Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press; 1995; as reported in http://www.pilambda.org/horizons/v81-1/81-1_zera_intro.pdfKyttner, Lars.

, General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives and Practice. (2nd ed. 2005) World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. Singapore for Hackensak, NJ: World Scientific Publishing Company. ISBN 981256389X, 9812564675.Peter, Ian. General Internet History Ian Peters History of the Internet, as given at http://www.nethistory.info/Resources/internet%20history.html Schnarr, Bill., The History of Web Hosting – A Galactic Network, extracted on January 29, 2010 from http://www.

thehistoryof.net/history-of-web-hosting.html; 2008Zera, David, A., What Is a System and a System Perspective? Extracted on January 29, 2010 from http://www.pilambda.org/horizons/v81-1/81-1_zera_intro.pdf