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Yes. So one has to pay attention to what layer or level of a system
is 'evolving' or 'extending'.
The
interesting bit about the implementation is that its evolution independent of
the interface
is
closed. If changes in the interface don't change it (and shouldn't), then
what is the source
of its
evolution? Programmer? Internal measurements? On the other
hand, the improvement
in its
speed does propagate to the containing system (it speeds up by some number
determined
by for
instance, the number of calls to it). This then is be
propagated to the system within
which
that one is couched (think of a race condition). The fun of
modeling these is in setting
up
coupled conditions that create novel behaviors. That is emergence.
It isn't spooky behavior;
just
tedious to audit and a reason to be suspicious of data mining
systems.
At the
heart of these concepts is the notion of system and environment in which the
environment
is an
evolvable system based on the activities of evolvable agents within it.
That is the basic concept
of
feedback-mediated adaptation which may be random or directed. Nota
bene: boundaryless
systems never are because a system without boundaries goes to entropy at
light speed. This
has
seldom stopped any consulting group in the last twenty five years from making
money
on the
concept though. Now they will say 'permeable' and that is correct.
Bottom
up? Maybe not. It actually works in both directions which
is something the so-called
'hippies' and 'straights' had to finally cope with and maybe the 'open
sourcers' and
'proprietaries' will as well when the environment forces them both
to evolve. ;-)
len
I
think that these definitions work well in terms of an interface.
However, if one looks at an implementation X of an interface B, the
implementation might be said to 'evolve' if it changes without any change
to the interface B. Such 'evolution' might be to improve performance in
some respect, with better algorithms surviving and poorer algorithms being
killed off.
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