Customer Reviews

World Dynamics

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The book has code fragments and simulations that attempt to show the dangers of continued, unrestrained resource usage and population growth. It was written at a time of unease about the "limits to growth", as famously popularised by the Club of Rome.

A current reader will be struck by how quaint and primitive the simulations are. Please keep in mind that the author was constrained by the computers available in the early 70s. He did the best he could, using the hardware and knowledge available at that time.

In the subsequent decades of the 80s and 90s, the book's themes might well have been safely ignored. Yet now, the issues it covers could have new relevance. As China and India industrialise, and compete for resources with the developed nations, might there indeed be overcrowding effects? Not necessarily in actual population, for birth rates have thankfully plummetted worldwide since the book's publication.

This book concludes in 1971 that a new field of social dynamics is emerging. That did not happen, maybe because of lack of real value of these simulations, maybe because of the lack political will. Possibly as a reaction to these failures the seventies medias brought us catastrophe theory and chaos theory. Still, even with all the failure of "big simulation", simulation has succeeded to transform many areas of business, finance, and the economy. And because we all like pioneers we like this book and its author, Jay W. Forester, the man in back of the SAGE air defense system. The book includes the DYNAMO code for the "world model" as well as the model in the form of a diagram chart. Many simulation runs are analyzed and commented but unfortunately these read like old newspapers: they are of little value! It may be that the world is pursuing a path very similar to one of those simulations, but how can we accept that!