An organic intelligence system

In thinking about the progression of ideas as a book passes from chapter to chapter, it easy to think of the evolution taking place at the level of the book content. These evolutionary changes are obvious for all to see. However, as far as the authoring is concerned, there is another, more important place where evolution takes place: in the cafe. The content is being driven by the readers in the cafe, if this cafe can be made to evolve, it can become progressively more efficient at guiding and influencing the content.

This can be compared to the evolution of humans. It is common to think of human evolution as taking place at the physically observable level: shape, size and form. In fact, evolution takes place at a much lower level of organisation: the genes. Although the physical form may be constantly changing and adapting to an environment it is the genes that are being selectively reconfigured. Figure 17.6 illustrates the biological equivalents of the cafe, the table and the people at the tables.

The author's guidance system - the cafe - can thus be viewed as an organism and the responses from this system being a result of its gene activity. Just like any organism, the responses and behaviour can be varied by varying the genes. In other words, an author can control the system that is guiding the writing of the book by reconfiguring the people at the tables in the cafe.

Here we come to the very essence of the theory of evolution - and also the fundamental basis of evolutionary design strategies. An organism proceeds from one generation to the next by preferential selection and reorganisation of its genes. Genes and gene arrangements that perform well in one generation are selected to go forward to the next. Those that perform badly are not carried through to the next generation.

This means there is a very simple, single heuristic rule that drives the evolution of the stem. It is applied to every gene and gene combination in a generation: survive and breed lets you stay in, if you don't you go out.

The cafe can be arranged to evolve towards more efficient operation using exactly this same principle. In this case though, the heuristic rule that is applied doesn't relate to survival and reproduction: it relates to how well genes perform as an intelligent source of author guidance: guide well and you go through to the next generation, if you don't you go out. The difference is that in biological evolution the selection is automatic; in the cafe´ it will need human intervention.