Journaling 30-day-trial, Day 10

February 9th, 2008 by Bill Perry in 30-day-trials, Personal Development, journaling

This one should have been posted yesterday, but my hosting company had some file server issues, so I wasn’t able to log in to post this. Anyway, here is yesterday’s Journal Entry, and today’s will follow soon after!

Saturday, February 08, 2008 11:43 PM

As I was driving today, I got to thinking about complexity again. Complexity theory is one of those animals that really intrigues me because it’s amazing how seemingly intelligent behaviors can arise out of the simple interactions of many smaller constituent parts in a system.

Ants, Birds and weather patterns are the best examples I can think of as I write here. Well, other than traffic. This is a crazy animal all by itself. All these vehicles on the highways each day, and one change in the driving patterns of just one of those vehicles can have untold effects across the highway system, as all the other vehicles must adapt to constantly changing conditions.

So, with all these possible combinations of vehicle and traffic patterns, isn’t it possible that traffic accidents are inevitable?

Is it ever really possible to prevent accidents in a global fashion across the entire roadway system? The input factors into this system alone are mind-boggling in sheer numbers.

There are such things as the driver’s mental state, emotional state, physical state, state of the car itself. The list goes on and on.

Maybe, with enough study and supercomputers, it might be possible to identify “influence points” that can be controlled to minimize accidents in the traffic system?