Erik W. Aslaksen – författare

In this book, Erik W. Aslaksen builds on the view and model of society introduced in The Social Bond (Springer 2018), which portrays society as an information-processing system, and as both the result of the information and of the environment in which the information processing takes place. The processing power is provided by the individual, but is also greatly enhanced by the interaction between individuals, forming the collective intelligence that drives the evolution of society. In particular, this book focuses on the stability of that evolution, an issue that is of increasing concern given the current polarisation of the world society, both politically and economically, and the resultant interference in the operation of the collective intelligence. When we approach society as a genus and its evolution as a sequence of species, such as the family, clan, fiefdom, kingdom, and nation-state, the development of the next species – the world society – is now being thwarted by the desire of a minority to maintain a hegemonial position that resulted from a singularity in the process.

This book covers the work of Erik W. Aslaksen who continues to develop the view of society and its evolution published in earlier work – The Social Bond (Springer 2018), The Stability of Society (Springer 2020), and Measures of Social Evolution (Springer 2021), bringing together core material of that work with the results of recent investigations in order to present the evolution of society as an integrated and continuous story leading right up to the present time. A story of human action driven by our beliefs, desires, and an ideology arising out of our ability to transform and exploit our environment through the development and application of technology. The distinguishing feature of the work is the treatment of society as an information-processing system and applying the system methodology for handling complexity, as it is applied, e.g., in engineering. This focus on information is particularly pertinent in the current circumstances, where the world has arrived at a critical point in its history through the conjunction of a number of issues that appear to be spiralling out of control: Global warming and the associated climate change, the destruction of our environment through such processes as land clearing and industrialisation with associated loss of biodiversity, the rapidly increasing visibility of the inequality in the quality of life with associated tensions, and above all, the determination of the US-led Western alliance to cling to its hegemonial role, apparently at all cost. With the sophistication and proliferation of nuclear weapons, the latter has the potential to bring on the end of civilisation as we know it. The resolution of any of these issues depends on the information available to all parties involved, and hence, the availability and quality of information is seen as the crucial and overarching issue of the present time. A number of aspects of this issue, including the role of education, economic inequality, and the control of the media, aretreated in some detail, and proposals for some small steps in the right direction are put forward.

Systems engineering is a mandatory approach in some industries, and is gaining wider acceptance for complex projects in general. However, under the imperative of delivering these projects on time and within budget, the focus has been mainly on the management aspects, with less attention to improving the core engineering activity – design. This book addresses the application of the system concept to design in several ways: by developing a deeper understanding of the system concept, by defining design and its characteristics within the process of engineering, and by applying the system concept to the early stage of design, where it has the greatest impact.

A central theme of the book is that the purpose of engineering is to be useful in meeting the needs of society, and that therefore the ultimate measure of the benefit of applying the system concept should be the extent to which it advances the achievement of that purpose. Consequently, any consistent, top-down development of the functionality required of a solution to the problem of meeting a defined need must proceed from such a measure, and it is agued that a generalised form of Return on Investment is an appropriate measure. A theoretical framework for the development of functionality based on this measure and utilising the system concept is presented, together with some examples and practical guidelines.