View source for IST Seminar: The Architecture of Robust, Evolvable Networks

==Summary==

TITLE:
The Architecture of Robust, Evolvable Networks

ABSTRACT:
Biological systems are robust and evolvable in the face of even large
changes in environment and system components, yet can simultaneously be
extremely fragile to other small perturbations. Such universally robust
yet fragile (RYF) complexity is found wherever we look. The amazing
evolution of microbes into humans (robustness of lineages on long
timescales) is punctuated by mass extinctions (extreme fragility).
Diabetes, obesity, cancer, and autoimmune diseases are side-effects of
biological control and compensatory mechanisms so robust as to normally
go unnoticed. RYF complexity is not confined to biology. The complexity
of modern institutions and technologies is exploding, but in ways that
remain largely hidden. They facilitate robustness and accelerate
evolution, but enable catastrophes on a scale unimaginable without them
(from network and market crashes to war, epidemics, and global warming).
Understanding RYF means understanding architecture - the most universal,
high-level, persistent elements of organization - and protocols.
Protocols define how diverse modules interact, and architecture defines
how sets of protocols are organized.

Insights into the architectural and organizational principles of
networked systems can be drawn from three converging research themes.
1) With molecular biology's description of components and growing
attention to systems biology, the organizational principles of
biological networks are becoming increasingly apparent. Biologists are
articulating richly detailed explanations of biological complexity,
robustness, and evolvability that point to universal principles. 2)
Advanced technology's complexity is now approaching biology's. While the
components differ, there is striking convergence at the network level of
architecture and the role of layering, protocols, and feedback control
in structuring complex multiscale modularity. New theories of the
Internet and related networking technologies have led to test and
deployment of new protocols for high performance networking, and suggest
a rethinking of network architecture. 3) A new mathematical framework
for the study of complex networks suggests that this apparent
network-level evolutionary convergence within/between biology/technology
is not accidental, but follows necessarily from the universal system
requirements to be efficient, adaptive, evolvable, and robust to
perturbations in their environment and component parts.

== Slides ==

[http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~doyle/RNA/1ArchNotes.pptx    Architecture of Robust, Evolvable Networks]