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Complex Systems | The Point Magazine

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From the air, the desert outside Santa Fe was a craggy mass all the way to the horizon. The only non-craggy thing for hundreds of miles was one straight line, a road to town. It was as if somebody had put painter’s tape on a blank page, sketched mountains, shadows and masses of black forest, and then carefully lifted the tape off. The man next to me on the plane asked if I lived in Santa Fe, and I said no. Did he? He did. And did he know about the Santa Fe Institute, where I had been invited for a workshop? He merely frowned. Maybe you wouldn’t know about it if you weren’t looking for it. The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) lies on a road leading out of the city, past gentle hills, and eventually into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, so named because their slopes gleam red at sunrise and sunset. Low, flat Pueblo-style estates—symbols of New Mexican and Texan oil money—are scattered on the piñon-juniper hills like far-flung dominoes. Driving past, you could mistake the institute for just anothe

From the air, the desert outside Santa Fe was a craggy mass all the way to the horizon. The only non-craggy thing for hundreds of miles was one straight line, a road to town. It was as if somebody had put painter’s tape on a blank page, sketched mountains, shadows and masses of black forest, and then carefully lifted the tape off. The man next to me on the plane asked if I lived in Santa Fe, and I said no. Did he? He did. And did he know about the Santa Fe Institute, where I had been invited for a workshop? He merely frowned. Maybe you wouldn’t know about it if you weren’t looking for it. The

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