Fractal geodesic networks

[Tim May]

At 3:57 PM -0800 12/8/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, Jim Choate wrote:
>
>>
>>Fractal simply means non-integer dimension.
>>
>
>Yeah, that's where it started.  But I'm using it more in the
>sense of meaning the properties that fractal structures have;
>self-similarity across scales, for one, as in the big nodes
>work the same way as the little nodes and larger patterns are
>emergent from the interaction of simple rules. 
>
>>Computer networks, at least copper or fiber based, can't be fractal.
>
>Physically, true.  There is a minimum size feature, in the sense
>that some computing hardware and memory is required of every node. 
>In terms of the flow of information, I'm not as sure.

Argghhhh. Anyone claiming that something "can't be fractal," as 
Choate apparently does in the section you quote, just doesn't 
understand the meaning of fractal.

Or, in Choateworld, "Since all physical things have three spatial 
dimensions, there are no non-integer dimensions, and hence fractals 
cannot exist."

Like Choatian physics, Choatian economics, Choatian law, and Choatian 
history, such crankish ideas are neither useful nor interesting.


--Tim May
-- 
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