Edge Interface

[Ego]

In terms of a collapse: ... Yes, you're watching the civilizational collapse at the edge interfaces (think permacultue --- all the "interesting" stuff happens at the edge interfaces... stuff that's interesting enough to be lethal too) of the current empires proceeding more or less as predicted as a result of the predicted decline in conventional oil given the nondiscovery of adequate substitutes. IOW at this point in time: local destruction driving by a global shortage. But it doesn't look like that from here (in the middle of a robust core of the empire) because if you're reading this you can still buy the latest iPhone for only $499 and isn't that the very definition of progress

How well does the permaculture idea of edge fit in the real world? I guess I should start by asking how edges are defined.

[7Wannabe5]

Edges are where things happen. Where a forest meets the prairie, where a river flows into the sea, or at nearly any other boundary between two ecosystems is a cauldron of biodiversity. All the species that thrive in each of the two environments are present, plus new species that live in the transition zone between the two. The edge is richer than what lies on either side- Toby Hemenway, "Gaia's Garden"

Historically Hamtramck received a lot of immigration from Eastern Europe. In the 20th century Hamtramck was mostly Polish. George Tysh of the Metro Times stated that "In the early days of the auto industry, Hamtramck’s population swelled with Poles, so much so that you were more likely to hear Polish spoken on Joseph Campau than any other tongue." Later waves of immigration brought Albanians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Ukrainians, and Yemenis. By 2001 many Bangladeshis, Bosnians, and Iraqi Chaldeans were moving to Hamtramck. As of 2011 almost one in five Hamtramck residents was Asian. As of 2003, over 30 languages are spoken in Hamtramck and four religions, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam, are present in the city- Wikipedia -describing city in which I currently live and garden.

Here I am at an edge on the other side of the planet caused by somehow related events. The auto industry is created and booms and turns what was once a farming township (soil is still very fertile) into an extremely densely populated urban immigrant center. Then the auto industry crashes and the population decreases and crime and decay increase. Then the coming collapse of the fuel that fueled the auto industry causes conflict elsewhere which leads to recent greatly increased immigration from Middle East and Eastern Europe into this urban center simultaneous with return of hipster-great-grandchildren of first immigrant groups in the form of urban farmers and small art gallery owners etc. (My DD24 assures me that I am not a hipster because I am a Mom but I probably do deserve a bit of guilt by association.)

So, the other day, while hauling around peat moss in my overalls, I met the likely brilliant Iraqi trader, who bought a bunch of vacant lots at the auction I attended. He said he is buying up lots and abandoned buildings all over the Detroit area. The addresses are all messed up on one of the streets on which we both own property so I helped him out by figuring out where he was obliged to mow-else-pay-strict-penalty with my advanced English internet search skills and he offered to sell me the third chunk of land that adjoins my two adjoining lots for just a small profit, pretty much in exact accordance with the rules of playing Monopoly on the cheap side of the board.

My very loosely-knit analysis of the situation is that either things will continue to get "better" at this edge and my properties will go up in value due to gentrification or things will get "worse" but still I will own some prime farm land and be well able to purchase as much more as I desire to work. Also, I think Taleb made the point that one of the ways to be smart/stupid is just to copycat somebody who is in the possession of the knowledge you are too lazy to acquire. Therefore, I decided that if Jacob thought it was a good idea to buy real estate in Chicago then I am probably okay with my location at the same latitude within biking distance of the river, which is obviously the reason why people always chose to live here. Also, I would die of boredom in the suburbs. Nothing interesting ever happens in the suburbs (or, at least not in plain view.) The edge is where it's at. Just lucky for me that one exists very close to where I was born so I don't have to spend my pennies on travel.

[jacob]

The edge is not a permaculture idea. It's a systems theory concept (permaculture = systems theory + farming, ERE = systems theory + personal finance). I just use permaculture because many are familiar with it.

Good primers on systems theory are:
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems- ... 1603580557
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Gene ... 932633498/
http://www.amazon.com/Permaculture-Prin ... 646418440/

For management stuff, see Peter Senge.
For advanced stuff, see Gregory Bateson.

Books on cybernetics are also useful.

An edge is any discontinuity in a quantity. A table edge is a discontinuity in height. Discontinuities in most systems drive change iff there's a pathway, e.g. the ball can roll off the table and fall down unless a barrier prevents it.

In an ecosystem, as described above, the edge hold species from either side (desert and water) but also new species in the interface (river bank). Mature forests are actually relative deserts. If you want to attract wildlife, like deer, you need to create edges. This is done by planting food. Deer will come from the forest to the field and eat at the edges. The edge attracts/creates a population of deer that doesn't exist in either of the other cultures (forest or field on their own).

Another example of an edge are fronts in weather systems (between high pressure and low pressure). The dynamics manifest itself as rain and wind.

Another example is the shock front of an explosion. Things get destroyed at the front, not behind it(*), nor in front of it.

(*) Unless you want to get really technical!

In academia much of the current focus is interdisciplinary. Again, that's a study in edge interfaces. That is interesting.

In cities, edges are created when artists move into poor neighborhoods and gentrify them.

[Sclass]

This periphery and middle concept of Jacobs is brilliant.

I got a little lost in the should I buy land peak oil Internet news digest but the good take away was this concept. I get it. I not only live in the iPhone world, I actually live a couple of blocks from Steve Jobs childhood home (poor owners now have no trespassing signs in the lawn). I'm far away from Malaysian Kerosense smugglers or gawd...IS thugs.

This is brilliant and widely relevant. the Holocaust and great purge survivors I met as a kid had counterparts living in Boyle heights CA at the time of the crisis. The edge was not a good place.

Edit - just got my coffee. It's just like a big salt or ice crystal getting tossed into warm water. All the interesting kinetics are happening right at the edge of the water crystal boundary. While things look calm in the two media the boundary can be quite violent. Ever notice how small ice crystals chaotically spin while they melt just at the point they disappear?

[Ego]

Yeah, I've been seeing edges everywhere since Jacob and 7Wanna posted.

[jacob]

Edit - just got my coffee. It's just like a big salt or ice crystal getting tossed into warm water. All the interesting kinetics are happening right at the edge of the water crystal boundary. While things look calm in the two media the boundary can be quite violent. Ever notice how small ice crystals chaotically spin while they melt just at the point they disappear?

The ONLY reason that cream dissolves in coffee inside of several hours is that convection (whirls and twirls) rapidly expand the surface area interface (edge) thus allowing the very slow rate of diffusion to actually work within a reasonable time. If the cream stayed together in a blob, it would never dissolve.

Modelling this process is hard (you need to keep an accurate track of all that surface being generated ). Simulating melting glaciers is equally hard (one of the toughest problems in thermodynamics) because water and cracks and crevasses substantially increasing melting rates. This is why polar ice ice now melting substantially (factors) faster than simple diffusion models predict.

[Sclass]

The cream in the coffee is a facinating example. Convection drives more flow on the irregularities on the boundary. If a little finger of cream forms it becomes unstable as the Bernoulli force increases at a rounded bump as it's strength to hold on to the cream mass decreases. It literally gets ripped away by convective flows for being the nail that poked up too much. Another edge effect!

This is a big deal when you water flood heavy oil in enhanced production. You never really get the textbook flat wavefront of injection fluid sweeping heavy oil across a field to producing wells. Fingering (petroleum engineer geek speak) will blow a giant hole in a production estimate...pun intended.

A guy I knew used to explain atomization from spray paint cans this way. In a perfect world with no edge instability a spray paint can would be more like a squirt gun.