INFONAUT SO EASY

Recently discussed notions are intriguing, to say the least. The concept of Fractal as Interface requires some explanation. To define 'fractal' per se is, as has been noted, an open-ended question. In fact, I'd say it's rather like defining 'music'. How about that? So let's take a look at it...

Is the Mandelbrot Set a definition of 'fractal' or merely a special-case example? I think the latter. Consider that the algorithmic infrastructure is a simple recursive equation. And yet the plotting of successive iterations delineates a domain of unparalleled complexity. wherein emergent self-organized criticality discloses incredibly intertwined boundary areas, seemingly without specific scaling limits. So the question is, does the equation or the plot it generates define the nominal 'fractal'?

I feel that it's both - and neither. That the peculiar phenomenon we label 'fractal' is in fact a software aspect of the brain's information processing we call 'mind'. And further, that the ubiquitous examples of fractal forms in nature are likewise cases of software informing hardware. Just as 'music' is neither the score on the page nor the sounds of the orchestra, but rather the experience unfolding in the minds of the audience.

So I recognize that interface is fractal: this seems to apply across the board, at whatever level I consider. I think this is an important insight...because even in terms of the digital neural processing of information in the brain, this odd concept of a fractal interface makes sense. And it satisfies Conservation of Information, Parsimony, and Entity. That is to say that syntax is preserved, indeed enhanced, with this model.

Whether as physical structure or metaphysical pattern, a fractal definition of interface provides maximum interactive domains with minimal informational overhead. Thus lungs, brains, clouds and trees are delineated by simple recursive algorithms, with resultant complexity, at some critical level of density, unfolding self-referent, emergent order, while maintaining rigorous parsimony.

We can observe that the nested cascades of feedback loops which function through metalevel recursion in nature accrete to attractors through emergent order, by way of synchrony. The result is that a certain critical density of multifurcative process will begin to exhibit entropy, self-reference, and self-organized criticality. Subject to extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.

Because Order, as emergent from Chaos, by virtue of attractors, elicits the most basic quantum events, such as photons, which unfold into the Universe we share. And quarks manifest as solitons, to form what we perceive as 'matter'. The hardware phase of information, of which DNA is a perfect example; it's certainly self-referent - and indeed, self-replicating, to the max. And geodesic in structure. How logical and parsimonious can you get?

The role of DNA is that of the quintessential interface: with space, time, matter, and energy. To say that DNA's function is fractal would almost seem a tautology. And yet it clearly is fractal; we're here as a result. Universe looking back at itself, as it were...which means we are really metaphors: information about information - and so we presume to establish Entity.

This brings to mind the Dandelion Model. A lot plugs into that.                                

BDM 12/93

--"TRUTH is a five-letter word" - bdm