Chaos and order in information systems

The word 'chaos' is an interesting example of an old word that is having its meaning reshaped by the, um, chaotic forces of change that surround us all.

In speech and in informal writing we generally use the term in the negative sense of an orderless bedlam of some sort. Few IT personnel would be happy to hear their systems described as chaotic. However, to a physicist, a chaotic system is not senseless bedlam at all. On the contrary, chaotic systems can be very simple systems that just happen to look as if they are utterly senseless when observed casually. The apparent disorder disappears once you look at the (often simple) feedback-based equations that drive the system.

Thankfully, it often turns out that extremely intricate patterns can be explained with very simple underlying models. Furthermore, extreme diversity of behavior through time can often be explained by nothing more complicated than extreme sensitivity to the initial conditions that launched the system. Therein lies the physics/math interpretation of the word 'chaos'[1].

I try to keep this underlying simplicity in mind when, on a day to day basis, I fight the forces of Bedlam that besiege the information systems I'm involved in. Chaos - in the colloquial sense - often appears to be the normal state of affairs. Order - if it exists - is rarely apparent and tracking it down requires faith and determination in equal measure.

Take information for example. For a long time, our concept of order in information has been tied to the physical world. We speak negatively about information that is 'all over the place' or 'scattered'. We have a centuries old tradition of bringing order to information by physically 'gathering' the stuff into the same physical place: books and libraries being classic examples. We also have a centuries old tradition of adding value to information by the simple expedient of gathering disparate pieces and putting them in the same place. Reference works being the classic example.

Alongside this centuries-old tradition there is a shorter tradition of using computer systems to bring order to information. For a long time, this tradition mimicked the physical world view by gathering disparate information resources in to some central place. For example, putting them together on a hard disk or together on a CD-ROM.

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