Feedback

We live in a world where things come and go, rise and fall, grow and decay, tracing out cycles of change that are ordered and predictable. But amongst those well-behaved rhythms hide other phenomena, pulsing and fizzing and refusing to play by the same rules.

Earth and the life upon it have evolved over billions of years to be right where we are now only because of feedbacks that pushed those systems until they broke. And then those systems adapted, reorganized, and rebuilt. With each new cycle of growth it was feedbacks that created order from disorder and gave rise to a world perfectly optimized for everything it needed to be.

Now the latest scientific research is revealing that the exact same patterns that describe plate tectonics, evolution, and mass extinctions also emerge in the heartbeat of our everyday lives, underpinning everything from the cohesion of our social networks and personal relationships to our emotional well-being and spiritual beliefs.

In Feedback, we embark on a backstage journey revealing how these lesser-known processes keep us operating right where we need to be, poised at the edge of chaos. In a world simultaneously threatened with social and environmental disasters this journey uncovers the hidden connections that unite us not just to those around us but also across vast scales of time and space to the very fabric of the universe.