Explore "Surfing the Edge of Chaos" by Mark Millemann on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The edge of chaos is a condition, not a location. It is a permeable, intermediate state through which order and disorder flow, not a finite line of demarcation. Moving to the edge of chaos creates upheaval but not dissolution. That's why the edge of chaos is so important. The edge is not the abyss. It's the sweet spot for productive change.1
The first fire ant arrived from South America before World War II. Naturalist Richard Conniff has extensively documented the fifty-plus years of war against this species-how pushing it to the edge of chaos evoked its astonishing array of survival strategies. To date, the fire ant is winning, having proliferated and expanded from its initial beachhead in Miami to occupy 260 million acres in eleven states. Cameo appearances in Phoenix, Arizona, and Santa Barbara, California, were thwarted (at least temporarily) by exterminators.2