Thinking in Promises

Chapter 9. Systemic Promises

A system is commonly understood to mean a number of parts that collectively perform a function by working together. Agents within systems have intentional behaviour, so they can make promises collectively, by cooperation, or individually. They can be built from humans, animals, machinery, businesses, or public sector organizations.

What Is a System?

A system is an emergent phenomenon. The virtual or systemic properties promised by a system come about from the collaboration of actual promises made by its internal agencies. No individual component within the system typically promises the qualities that a system embodies.

For example, the firefighting emergency service promises to cover half a city, respond to several simultaneous emergency calls, and put out fires within a maximum amount of time. There is no single component that leads to this promise being kept.¹

Systems can promise things that individuals can’t. If a military officer pointed to a soldier and shouted, “You, soldier, surround the enemy!” few individual soldiers would be able to respond. However, if the soldier was a superagent, composed of many collaborating parts (like a swarm of bees), it would be a different story. Systems may thus be strongly or weakly coupled collections of agents. A simple aggregation of residents in a building is not really a system, but, if all agents promise to work together, they could turn cohabitation into cooperation, and make new irreducible promises such ...