When we look at scale in human systems, we may be tempted to look at a single cell and start counting And certainly 17 trillion human cells and approximately 17 trillion other cells and entities (by some reports) gives a very good idea of scale in one sense, as compared to, for example, an ant which has 20-22 million cells. But in this talk, we present the idea that the complexity of individual entities matters a great deal when we start discussing scale – in why we are attempting to define and measure it and in how we do so.

One reason we discuss scale is that we note that the organization and the processes needed to control a system change dramatically as the scale changes. But as we will show with examples, control architectures and processes also change enormously when there are a diversity of elements and when the individual elements become increasingly complex. This individual complexity is often a source of the overall diversity since the individual complexity can allow individuals to be in different states and intent on doing different things.

There are several methods that living systems – forests, fungi, and animal systems – use to handle these different types of scale and it seems worthwhile for researchers to consider what ones are applicable to their computer-based systems.