So when do we call a system self-organizing?

Recently, in a PhD seminar talk the discussion arose, if a particular system is self-organizing or not. Such discussions are emerging with high probability every now and then followed by a discussion that lasts for some time.
It seems that the term "self-organizing system" is a very difficult concept for the following reasons:
First, being named self-organizing, such system are often literally understood as some entity that organizes itself, like a person managing her own affairs in life. The "self" can be misleading here since it may be understood as a single controlling entity.
Actually in self-organization, there is no "self" that organizes. It rather means that systems appear to organize themselves without external direction, manipulation, or control.

Cloth of gold cone: visible pattern as a result
of a self-organizing process (Image: Wikipedia)

To avoid this misinterpretation, the term is sometimes replaced or augmented with spontaneous pattern emergence. But this creates a mental image of patterns in the reader's mind (like the cone displayed to the right). Other self-organizing processes like coherent laser light or clock synchronization create internal order, but no visible pattern.
Another problem is that you can change a system with external control to one without by redrawing the systems boundaries. So a bunch of workers being instructed by a foreman would not be perceived as self-organizing, but a construction cite with different teams, each one coming with a foreman, but otherwise loosely interacting might be seen as self-organizing (unless you model in the blueprints).
Gershenson and Heylighen proposed a nice way out of this dilemma by stating "self-organization is a way of observing systems, not an absolute class of systems". So depending if the self-organizing view is beneficial, you should model your system accordingly, otherwise not.
Another difficulty arises from the fact that self-organization roots in several disciplines, there are many notions and definitions from biology, chemistry, computer science, cybernetics, economics, mathematics, physics, and sociology. Most of these disciplines contribute one or more definitions on self-organization based on the discipline-specific terminology.
As shown by the following examples, there is no single brief but comprehensive definition for self-organization. The following definitions may be useful though:

A self-organizing system (SOS) consists of a set of entities that obtains an emerging global system behavior via local interactions without centralized control.
(from Research Days'08, see [IWSOS:2008]))

Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning. (Wikipedia)

A self-organizing system is a system that changes its basic structure as a function of its experience and environment. (Farley and Clark 1954)

Are they really refering to the same thing? So be warned, when a discussion heads towards the definition of self-organization!

• C. Gershenson, F. Heylighen. When Can we Call a System Self-organizing? In Banzhaf, W, T. Christaller, P. Dittrich, J. T. Kim, and J. Ziegler, Advances in Artificial Life, 7th European Conference, ECAL 2003, Dortmund, Germany, pp. 606-614. LNAI 2801. Springer.
  
• W. Elmenreich, H. de Meer. Self-organizing networked systems for technical applications: A discussion on open issues. In J.P.G. Sterbenz. K.A. Hummel, editor, Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Self-Organizing Systems, pages 1–9. Springer Verlag, 2008.
  

A self-organizing algorithm for video distribution networks

The way how users consume videos has changed with the availability of large repositories with a high number of more or less related videos. Many users are only interested in tiny fractions of a video and not even necessarily in the original temporal order. Moreover, they might wish to dynamically compose portions of di erent videos into one presentation.
For example, take a video recording of a ski-jumping competition. Some users might be interested in watching it sequentially. A trainer might be interested in studying the jumping-off technique of athletes in parallel. Another user might be interested in the performance of several jumpers from one country.
In order to keep up with this emergent access patterns, we invented a self-organizing video delivery network that is based on artificial hormones which are spread throughout the network when a particular video is requested. The hormone spreading is affected by the bandwidth and delay parameters of the network edges, thus indirectly help in searching for the (currently) best path to transmit a video.
The interactions between nodes like spreading/evaporating hormone or moving a video according to the neighbor with highest hormone gradient are all local within a node's neighborhood. Still, the system is able
to guide the overall transportation and placement of units in the system up to near optimum.

• A. Sobe, W. Elmenreich, and L. Böszörmenyi. Towards a Self-Organizing Replication Model for Non-Sequential Media Access ACM Multimedia 2010 Workshop - Social, Adaptive and Personalized Multimedia Interaction and Access, SAPMIA 2010
  
• videonetwork - A simulator for self-organizing video replication and delivery @ Google Code
  
• Self Organizing Multimedia Architecture - A Lakeside Labs Research Project

Mozart meets Darwin - Creating music by evolution

Mozart meets Darwin is a case study where we try to evolve a piece of music, a simple melody. To evolve something, we need a model of the canditates, a method to mutate a candidate (that is apply some random perturbations), a method to recombine two parent candidates into similar children canditates, and a way to assess the fitness of a result. Using the music notes as DNA, we came up with solutions for mutation and recombination. But the assessment of the quality cannot be done by the machine - that is where we need you to indicate which piece of music is better than the other.




In the application above, you can listen to sets of five examples and rank them according to your personal preference. A computer program on a server will gather the rankings until it has sufficient input to decide how to evolve to the next generation. Mutation and recombination will be the "creativity" of the computer program. Please rank a few sets and get an impression of the approach. If you come back later, you will notice that the music pieces have improved, typically towards the overall music taste - hopefully you like it!
The results will be posted later under the GNU FDL license - so you can use the evolved melody in a song if you like.