[http://metaphoricalweb.ning.com/profiles/blogs/future-proof-abstraction-uses]
Societies, just as software systems and other dynamic systems, have the
potential to operate at multiple levels of abstraction. Government is
an abstraction, for instance - you can't point to a particular building
and say that is the government - it may house the officials and the
record stores, but the government is in fact the interaction of a set
of laws and rights with the participants of that government, and the
officials in question essentially serve to make government happen.
Government isn't a thing, its a process - and as such it uses energy.

Abstraction is the process of hiding complexity under a metaphor (or
interface). Once the abstraction exists, it becomes a thing, and can
interact with other things at the same level. This can be seen in the
settlement metaphor. A person leaves a city and journeys into the
wilderness. There he sets up a farm. Others, driven by the same
pressures, set up farms nearby - the resource base is extensive (though
not infinite). The farmers initially farm to produce enough goods to
feed themselves, but eventually may reach a point where they produce
more than they consume and they can start trading.

A trading post is set up within comfortable transportation range, and
they are soon able to specialize in producing different products. Other
amenities spring up - smiths to handle shoeing of horses and production
of localized implements, chandlers to produce candles for light,
coopers to build barrels and storage bins, taverns to provide food and
drink (and occasionally companionship) and so on. A certain degree of
energy is required to reach this stage, and the degree of dissonance
rises with the number of interactions, until eventually, a group of
people get together and set up a set of rules to create a "town",
providing basic services (such as law enforcement) at the expense of
certain activities (such as robbery or murder being "allowable"). It
takes a certain level of energy to get to this new level of
abstraction, but once it's achieved, it's stable - it's a quantum
electron state within a metaphorical atom.

So long as the energy is supplied (taxes or services on the part of the
members), the town continues to exist - and can even exist for a
certain period of time after the energy is removed (thus, it's actually
quasi-stable). This is why gold mining towns often died out - once the
energy (in the form of gold sales) was removed, the town eventually
couldn't maintain a sufficient level of complexity to continue. The
building might persists, but no one was in them to do the business of
governance.

Eventually, if the energy is maintained, other towns spring up in the
same general vicinity. Advances in technology become possible as people
specialize, and as edge effects motivate innovation. The towns begin to
trade with one another, and as they grow, their boundaries eventually
overlap. These towns (or townships, as they are now increasingly
called) are able to produce more, are able to devote more energy to
communal activities - the development of schools, of watersheds, of
roads, of sanitation facilities. The towns become a city, forcing a
higher level of abstraction (and more energy).

The interactions of cities with other cities is similar to, that of
towns with other towns, but it is usually at a much higher level; ad
hoc rules become the foundation of formal legal systems, universities
spring up, as does the rise of a formal peace-keeping militia (a police
force). At some point, if there are indigenous peoples in the same
area, the expanding towns will eventually end up reaching one of three
states - if they are at a sufficient level of abstraction to expend the
energy, they will wipe out the indigenous population. If they aren't,
then the will either assimilate the other culture and be changed by it
in turn, or they will marginalize the other population - literally push
them to the margins of the existing system. This is part of the reason
why cultures with lower levels of societal abstraction (energy draws)
tend to end up living in typically harsh and forbidding lands when such
expansion occurs.

In time, the various cities in a region also form abstractions -
provinces. Provinces (in the general sense, not specifically Canadian
provinces) differ from cities in a qualitative way, and again they
require a certain energy level to function properly. This nesting
process can be carried up the line. Moreover, you can have other
abstractions that have their own plateus - the structure of business,
from sole proprieterships to transnational corporations, follow a very
similar progression, and are in many ways fueled by the same energy
derivatives - the movement of money in the economy.

It's worth addressing that issue here. Energy is required to convert
resources into usable form, energy is required to transport those goods
to either other processors or to consumers, who in turn use that energy
to handle the processing of those goods either physically - a
foundryman pouring steel into ingots, a truck drive driving those
ingots to a construction site, a construction worker using the beams as
piles the foundational support of an office building - or virtually -
the bank manager who arranges finance for the office building, the
graphic artist who puts together a brochure about the office building
for prospective buyers, the programmer who writes the program that
handles the finances. Money, then, can be seen as a proxy for either
energy or resources (and usually a combination of both), while
technology should be seen as a way to convert this money back into
energy in some fashion.

Note, however, that this process of nested abstraction does not place
all at once. A higher level of abstraction can only exist once the need
for that abstraction arises - while you can call a new town in a virgin
region a province, can draw maps, and put together flags, the
abstraction level will remain that of a town until such time as you
have enough of the actors (towns in this case) to even make a city, let
alone a province. Similarly, a conqueror can take control over a number
of cities in a region, but if he doesn't do anything to make those
cities work together in a cohesive fashion (and doesn't supply the
energy to make this possible on a continuous basis) then his empire
will crumble within a few years.

So what happens when the amount of energy available drops? At first,
not much. You get discontent among the participants, but there's also a
certain amount of momentum that exists at each plateau that keeps the
abstractions going. Call it cultural memory - its the reluctance that
people have to give up what they have in terms of their own binding to
the abstraction. Moreover, the energy levels of the highest
abstractions tend to have higher priority than lower level
abstractions. This means those at the lowest levels of abstractions
usually feel problems first.

Individual towns first reduce staff and services, then reach the
fateful day when they can't meet payroll, and disincorporate. Services
disappear, and people leave. Opportunities diminish. In time, the town
becomes a ghost town. The same things begin to happen at former
townships that are now suburbs. The cost of commuting becomes too high
compared to the benefit of living away from the action. Individual
stores begin to fail, then malls begin to fall vacant. Housing prices
drop, foreclosures rise, and crime levels (a break down of the
authority of the state to maintain order) rise along with it. The
wealthiest neighborhoods become increasingly isolated, gated
communities that effectively maintain their own separate identity
(energy levels are higher here) but the allocation of energy (via
wealth distribution and services) to those outside these gated
communities begins its own steady decline.

Eventually, whole sections of a city go dark, lives become increasingly
desperate, and those with the means to do so flee the city to get
closer to centers of power (and hence of energy). This urban flight
only exacerbates the situation, diminishing the tax base. Deserted
areas increasingly go to seed, their resources stripped, their
infrastructure devastated. Communication and transportation routes
begin to fail due to vandalism and lack of maintenance. Educational
levels drop, and the few areas that remain at a higher potential
eventually become separate towns Urban centers, may see a brief uptick
in their fortunes as suburbanites move closer, but unless they can find
a new equilibrium from alternative energy sources (either directly or
indirectly) then they become more and more townlike themselves.

At the higher level of organization, the provincial control begins to
falter as energy is shunted to the political center. Unrest begins to
rise, and at the edges of the province, where control is weakest, if a
particular group of cities are able to gain a new source of energy,
then they may in fact attempt to break away. This will usually result
in armed conflict and civil war, as provincial authorities end up
investing ever more energy into building up the military and police,
yet the more that regions break away, the smaller the tax base and the
less energy that the capital can allocate. Eventually, the province
fragments into smaller abstractions, and with that loses political
power.

Again, note that the same thing is true for any form of abstraction.
Small companies merge or are acquired to provide more services, branch
offices are added, which eventually requires regional management, which
in time extends out to extra-provincial activities. This brings more
money in but also increases its need to sustain that monetary flow.
This means that most companies ultimately can get only so big before
they become unwieldy, unable to respond rapidly to change in the
markets, and consequently energy outflow exceeds energy inflow.

During tough times, companies close branch offices, spin off divisions,
become increasingly specialized - in other words, they shift down to
the previous level of abstraction, even while potentially seeding their
future competitors. This also affects business partner and supply chain
channels. The best and the brightest - the innovators in the company,
who are in effect energy multipliers, realize their opportunities are
limited, and leave to form their own ventures. In other words, as
energy recedes, things become more primitive.

Note that this isn't necessarily an up and down process - technology
can make new sources of energy viable, reversing a decline, structural
changes in the economy (which can create temporary drawdowns) can be
resolved, particularly draining activities (such as wars) can end,
reducing demands upon energy and so forth. Moreover, once a given
abstraction level is achieved, even if it is temporarily lost, the
energy necessary to rebuild is usually less than it was initially (less
need for expensive innovation).

On the flip side, environmental degradation can serve as friction
towards the utilization of new energy. Environmental degradation in
this case usually means that the cost of extracting energy into usable
forms goes up, and tends to be a major drag upon any system. One way of
thinking about this is that such degradation is systemic turbulence.
The role of both technology and environmental degradation will be
covered in the next column.

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Posted By Kurt Cagle to Metaphorical Web at 5/07/2009 09:56:00 AM

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